Bacterial Fermentation

We did not make any of Dills last year, but are currently down to our very last bottle so I definitely had to this year! My oldest son is the biggest pickle eater in the house, and now that he is nine I figured it was well time he could chip in with a good deal of the work on these. And thankfully he was eager to do just that.

Make sure that you are buying freshly picked cukes for your dills. These are #1 size, which are the smallest and also the most expensive. Size does not really matter so get whatever size you like. Just make sure the fruit are firm and crisp, and that you clean them well and check each and every one of them for imperfections. Tiny imperfections or soft spots can be cut out, but larger ones mean you should just discard the whole thing. I was really impressed with this half bushel - there were only four discards in the whole thing!

Some minor changes in my setup - I wanted to go with smaller buckets but had a fair bit of difficulty finding something of the right diameter to hold the cabbage below the brine level - then it struck me that I could easily cut the bottom out of one of the buckets and use it. Afterall, I'd gotten them for free.

Sauerkraut is incredibly easy to make - just chop the cabbage, add some non-iodized salt, and let it do its work. There is a bacterium which lives naturally on the cabbage, that begins to thrive in an environment which has the right salt concentration - 1/4 cup of pickling salt per 5 lbs of cabbage will do the trick nicely. As the bacterium grows and reproduces, it consumes carbohydrates in the cabbage and excretes a type of acid that is similar to household vinegar. This lowers the pH of the mixture, which in turn preserves it. In fact, when done properly, the sauerkraut need not even be canned - my grandfather, who was an immigrant from Ukraine, used to have a huge barrel of sauerkraut in the back porch, and used to scoop from it year round for his daily intake.

We had our pickle party on Sunday, and it was a huge success! There were 7 or 8 different people making pickles and sauerkraut, I had the smoker and grill running all day, and another friend made a huge scoff of Sausages and Sauerkraut that was eagerly gobbled up as well. In this picture you can see a bucket of cabbage that has "the pickle up" as my wife's grandfather taught me - after a good deal of stomping, the cabbage juice comes out. You have to stop until you have enough juice to cover the cabbage.

We started off in the side yard sitting around a makeshift table, cutting our cabbage and cleaning our cucumbers. Some people chose to chop their cabbage coursely and quickly, while others chose to do their fine and with a great amount of detail and attention. We started out the evening using a big (full) juice can as a stomper, but I quickly realised that this was far from ideal, so I grabbed the chainsaw and a piece of applewood that I'd had set aside for making a stomper, and cut away until I had something workable, with a built-in handle. In the end, everyone was able to use this to stomp-up enough of a pickle to submerge their kraut.

OK, we've set the date. Stay tuned to this article for updates. For anyone in Ottawa interested, on the Sunday of the Labour Day weekend we'll be hosting a party where we show you how to make fermented ("kosher") dill pickles, and sauerkraut, probably starting at 14:00

Right now is the first weekend at the Parkdale Market where they have the pickling cukes. You are best off to order yours ahead of time and if possible pick them up first thing on the Saturday morning and store them in your fridge til Sunday, or a cooler with a bag of ice, since very few of the market vendors get deliveries on Sunday. You need to order #1 (number 1) Cukes. Call these guys to order : Claude Roy & Denis Roy : 613-323-4538. 1/2 bushel is about 30 lbs, and makes about 20 litres of dills. This amount takes 2 people about 90 minutes to prepare.

Cabbage is not such a big deal - can just pick it up on the Sunday at the market. It is currently $1.50 per head with the people I usually get it from. Per huge cabbage you get about 5 litres of kraut, and need 1/4 cup salt.

Making yoghurt is extremely easy to do, and is an awful lot cheaper than buying it. You just need some milk, and a few tablespoons of store bought yoghurt that has an active bacterial culture. Just read the label and it should say whether or not it does.

Just put some milk in a pot on the stove, and slowly bring it up to 185F to scald it. This re-arranges the proteins in the milk to help make for a thicker yoghurt, and it also re-pasteurizes the milk. Hold it at this temperature for 10 minutes, then let it cool to about 115F. With the lid on, 1-and-one-third litres of milk (a single bag of milk here in Canada) will take about an hour and forty-five minutes to come down to that temperature.