Old Fashioned Sweet Nine Day Pickles Recipe - Food.com (2024)

FAQs

How do they make old fashioned pickles? ›

Label and date your jars and store them in a clean, cool, dark, and dry place such as a pantry, cabinet, or basem*nt. Don't store in a warm spot! To allow pickles to mellow and develop a delicious flavor, wait at least 3 weeks before eating! Keep in mind that pickles may be ready to enjoy earlier.

Use the freshest cucumbers possible. Add tannins such as grape leaves or horseradish leaves. Cut off the blossom end of the cucumber before pickling. Keep your pickles cold or soak them in ice water before canning.

Quick pickling, or refrigerator pickling, involves a simple boil-and-pour method of pickling. You take all of your ingredients, apart from the product that is being pickled, and bring them to a boil. The heating process helps activate the flavors in the brine and marry them together.

Cucumbers were washed, then piled in large wooden barrels along with dill, garlic, spices, kosher salt and clean water.

The taste of your pickled vegetables can be greatly changed by toasting spices. This is because toasting spices cause the natural oils of a spice to be released, which in turn amplifies the flavors.

The biggest difference between dill and sour pickles is that the former includes fresh dill weed (and occasionally dill seeds or oil) for a boost of herby flavor. Also, dill pickles nowadays are typically vinegar-based, while sour pickles are always fermented in a salt brine.

The acetic acid in vinegar or the lactic acid produced by brine gives the pickle its salty, sour taste. Brine also can contain a variety of spices to add flavor to pickles. Common spices added to brine include garlic, horseradish, dill, and white mustard seeds.

Better yet, grow them in the garden and ferment the day you pick them! Tasting the stem end can give you a sense of whether the pickle will be bitter since that's the end where bitterness concentrates. Soaking your cucumbers in ice water 30-60 minutes before fermenting seems to help keep crispness.

Why do you soak cucumbers in salt water before making pickles? ›

This salt treatment draws water out of the cucumbers and flavors them, so it's critically important. After layering or mixing in plenty of sea salt, I cover the salted cukes with ice cubes and a tea towel and forget about them for a few hours.

Processing is necessary for all pickles and relishes to destroy the yeasts, molds, and bacteria that may cause the product to spoil and inactivate enzymes that could affect color, flavor, and texture of the pickled product. Process the pickled products for the length of time specified in the recipe.

The best way to keep your pickles crisp is by taking an extra moment to remove the blossom from the end of the cucumber. By adding this extra cut, you have a crisper pickle. Other ways to ensure a crisp pickle is by adding grape leaves to your jar. I tend to cut off both ends of the cucumber as I quickly process them.

Pickle Crisp, I learned, is a trade name for calcium chloride, a common additive in commercial canning. Calcium chloride is used for several purposes, but in pickles it is mainly a firming agent.

Most fruit preserves and pickles are sufficiently high in acid to be canned via a method called water bath canning, where jars are submerged in boiling water for a prescribed amount of time. This destroys any pathogens in the food, and creates a seal, thereby rendering the jars shelf-stable.

Cucumbers undergo a relatively short fermentation, while cabbages may take several months to yield finished sauerkraut. During this time, cultures transform the fresh vegetables into pickles by converting sugars to lactic acid, acetic acid, carbon dioxide, and other beneficial substances.

Pickles can be prepared using one of two main methods: lactic acid fermentation of vegetables, either with or without the addition of salt the preservation of vegetables in acetic acid (vinegar). The products made by these two methods are very different -each one has its own distinctive taste and texture.

A pickled cucumber – commonly known as a pickle in the United States and Canada and traditionally a gherkin (/ɡərkɪn/) in Britain, Ireland, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand – is a usually small or miniature cucumber that has been pickled in a brine, vinegar, or other solution and left to ferment.

Throughout history, pickles were soaked in a brine solution inside barrels, but today the process takes place using advanced machinery. Vegetables are boiled and rinsed to remove bacteria, and then they are placed in jars with different brine solutions to create different pickle flavors.