Pickle Head

I'm addicted to new green cucumbers. Crisp & crunchy, garlicky with a hit of dill, they're an occasional expensive to buy treat. The solution, make my own. 

For anyone who doesn't know New Greens, pickled cucumbers are an Eastern European thing, a Jewish thing, and a Polish thing. Obviously also an American thing brought to the shores by immigrants. Other cultures understand pickles. In the UK, this understanding seems to be slow on the uptake and manys the website that is devoted to Americans trying to find the pickles they know and love. 

Growing up I could never understand my friends wrinkling up their noses at the slices of pickles in their burgers. To my mind they were often the best bit. What we knew as pickled cucumbers were dismissed derisively as gherkins. Most countries in the world have good pickle recipes...
Is it just the British who have a misunderstanding with pickled cucumbers?
In the US pickles are either sours or half sours but either way, the mixture used is either brine, or vinegar, or both. A half sour gets a shorter fermentation period and stays crisp and green; voila, the new green cucumbers I love.  
My mum’s recipe for making new green pickled cucumbers was one of those never written down, I just make it up as I go along methods:~

Fill a glass sweet jar 3/4 with cold water. Add acetic acid a spoonful at a time, plus enough salt & sugar. Keep tasting until you have a salt, sweet, sour & acid balance.

Add washed crook cucumbers; throw in pickling spice, garlic cloves & a sprig of dill optional.

Screw lid on & put in a dark place for about a week then taste. Keep tasting until ready. Should keep for a few weeks.

Whenever I tried this, my mixture would fizz & go off within a week. I now use a mixture of brine & vinegar and store in the fridge. I do not use acetic acid. Sadly I have no glass sweet jar. So far the cucumbers have kept beautifully although the colour isn’t as fresh and green as I’d like.  More experiments with lacto fermentation lie ahead.

New green cucumbers to me, need crooks, those thin, crisp, curvy cucumbers found at Greek or Turkish grocers. I used to think that crooks were a type of cucumber. Now I know, after years of trying to find the seed that they're the rejects, the ones that usually get away. 

New Green Cucumbers

Fresh crooks, about 15
Water
50g pickling salt

25g sugar (optional)
a dried chilli
Whole peppercorns

Mustard seeds
Whole garlic cloves (peeled)
A fresh dill sprig
Distilled white vinegar
Glass Jars

The salt you use must be without additives; sea salt is fine if you can’t find pickling salt. How many cucumbers you use depends on the size and number of your jars. The quantity here made enough for the one large jar I had (see photos) plus one jam jar size quantity. Make sure the lids are coated, with no damage or scratches.

Put your jars and lids in boiling water and soak thoroughly. Empty the jars and put them upside down in the oven for 10 minutes at 100 degrees C to dry.
2. In a large pan, combine a litre of water, 2 oz of salt, and 6 tablespoons white vinegar. Include 1oz of sugar if you want a sweet/sour flavour. Bring the mixture to a boil until all the salt is dissolved. Taste and add more sugar or salt if you like.
3. In each sterilized jar place: one large sprig of dill weed, a dried chilli, 3 cloves garlic, a few black peppercorns and a handful of mustard seeds.
4. Wash the cucumbers in cold water, pack them carefully into your chosen jars and pour in the hot vinegar mixture to within 1 inch of top.

5. Seal the glass jars and store out of the light for at least 2 weeks. Once you've opened and tasted, keep in the fridge.  

Here's the one I made earlier...

And two weeks later

Crispy, garlic flavoured pickled cucumbers, just as  they should be. BTW I adapted a recipe I found on the web, but can't find the original. If anyone recognises it, I'm happy to add the link.