Easy Eastern European Pickles
To avoid disappointment, I will warn you in advance: There is no knitting content in this post (just in case, upon reading the title, you expected this to be about a pickle-themed sweater). I mean I wouldn’t put it past me to name a sweater pattern ‘Easy Eastern European Pickles,’ so I completely understand the potential for confusion. But no. This is about actual pickles.
Over the holidays, among the other random things I sometimes post in my instagram Stories, I included one of the above photos. Since then I’ve had quite a few questions about what it is, how to make, etc. And it is in fact so easy, I thought why not start the new year by sharing.
The defining feature of Easy Eastern European Pickles is not so much what they include, as what they lack: vinegar. While the American pickle is recognised by its vinegary taste and smell, its distant old world cousin scoffs - nay, sneers - at this ingredient. The Easy Eastern European pickles are steeped in salt water, and salt water only, with various herbs and spices added to preference. The most classic recipe goes something like this:
EASY EASTERN EUROPEAN PICKLES
Ingredients:
cucumbers, dill, garlic, black peppercorns, water, salt, glass jar
Instructions:
*Place some dill and cut-up garlic cloves at the bottom of the jar. Add a few peppercorns. Slice some cucumbers length-wise and place them on top. Repeat from * until jar is full, topping up with dill/ garlic/ peppercorn again. Pour cooled boiled water into the jar until it is full. Add salt, closing and shaking the jar occasionally and tasting after every agitation - until the water tastes like sea brine. Alternatively, if you have access to actual (and unpolluted) seawater, you can just use that instead. Close the jar and place it in the fridge. After 3-4 days, the pickles are done! If made correctly, the pickles will taste salty and garlicky, and will feel crunchy.
Now, I know that the Real Cooks out there are twitching from the ambiguity of such a ‘recipe.’ What does she mean SOME cucumbers?? And what sort of nonsense is it to say that the water should taste like sea brine, instead of telling us how many tea spoons of salt to use?
Well, I am sorry to offend, really! But all that precision teaspoons/ ounces/ measuring cups stuff, is not in the spirit of the feral delicacy that is the Easy Eastern European pickles.
You simply try it, and try it multiple times - adjusting until it feels right to you personally. And honestly if it’s a little different every time? That is part of the charm. They are so easy after all, you can make them often and just see where the adventure takes you.
There are variations on the Easy Eastern European pickles recipe, which involves other - at times unexpected - produce. The most common variation is the Pickled Tomato. Made as-above, only with dill and chillies, instead of garlic. Rather counterintuitively, the tomatoes need to be kept in the fridge longer than cucumbers to reach the same level of saltiness; I would give it about a week. Everything else is the same.
In the same vein, I have seen pickled broad-beans, mushrooms, carrots, cauliflower, apples, and artichokes - made with various herbs and spices, but using the same basic salt/ fridge/ no-vinegar method.
But of course the piece de resistance, is pickled watermelon. Made almost identically to the cucumber pickles, with dill and plenty of garlic. Amazing!
Happy New Year to all, and enjoy!
