Half Sours
I really love half sours and wanted some. I did not, however, want to order some expensive pickles that I could make myself! Since I only had 4 of those little Persian cucumbers, I decided to thickly slice them instead of doing whole or in spears. I also discarded the blossom end, since that can really make things mushy!
NOTE: this is not a traditional preparation like you might be used to. This is what I was craving. You can monkey with spices as you see fit, though!
Most of this recipe is going to be in the captions of the pictures, because it feels good to me to do it that way right now. Not pictured is a small live oak leaf I tossed in well after I’d closed it up for tannins. You could do grape leaf, a bit of tea, a coffee bean, whatever has tannins.
You can scale this as needed. I needed small batch.
I used 8 thin slices of turmeric. If I hadn’t had this, it’s unlikely I would’ve used powdered. 1 large clove garlic (should’ve been 2-3), 1 tiny dried chile arbol, 1 allspice berry, 1/8 teaspoon black peppercorns, 1/4 teaspoon coriander seed, 1/4 teaspoon dill seed, 1/8 teaspoon yellow mustard seed. I put this in a 20oz Mason jar. Whatever tannin thing you’re using should go in here at this time, too.
Followed by the 4 thickly sliced cucumbers. This is a salad bowl, for reference.
Aren’t these jars amazing? I didn’t even know this size was a thing until Jenna gifted them to me.
This has around a tablespoon of pink salt. You can use any salt that doesn’t have iodine. I really needed closer to a cup and a half of water, but I didn’t add more salt. I started it like this because I had no earthly idea how much I would need and didn’t want to either toss or save leftover brine.
I used a pickle pipe, but did not weight down my cucumbers (as you can see), because I didn’t feel like it. I remembered the next day that Every. Single. Time I pull this stunt that I get mold, so I swapped it out to a fermenting jar.
Because these are sliced, I got into them at 6 days. These could take 7-10, depending on conditions and your own flavor preferences. These were perfect, though. Very mellow ferment, but with enough space for them to develop further in the fridge without getting gross if I don’t nom them all down quickly.
