Infinite Pickles?
Time to follow a viral TikTok trend
So there has been a question going around asking is it possible to make pickles simply by sticking a raw cucumber into pickle juice. Today I not only want to answer this but let’s see how the results compare against some homemade pickles.
Alright to test this question, first, we need some pickle juice.
Making pickles from recycled brine
Thankfully I have a jar of pickles in my fridge for us to test this question, I went ahead and removed the pickles from the brine or pickle juice as it is also called. Now we just need to add some new cucumbers. I found a pack of mini-cucumbers which I found to be a perfect size. Now the only thing we really need to do here is cut off the blossom end of the cucumbers, which is the opposite of the stem side. Just go ahead and load the cucumbers into the brine and close it up.
So let’s put these off to the side in some direct sunlight for them to begin fermenting.
Making some homemade pickles
While our test pickles are fermenting we need something to compare against, so for our comparison let’s quickly make some of our own pickles. It honestly couldn’t be simpler. All we need to do is basically make our own pickle brine.
To do this, we need 1 ½ cup of white distilled vinegar. We need some salt, so let’s add 15 grams of salt grams of .5 ounces of salt. Preferably a non-iodized salt, which can make things cloudy, however, I used an iodized salt and the homemade batch didn’t get cloudy. Stir the salt until it dissolves, this might take a little bit. Next add 1 cup of cold water.
Alright, that is a simple brine, but let’s add some extra flavorings to make our pickles really taste awesome. So let’s start with some garlic, garlic is what makes kosher pickles kosher pickles, peel and crush 4 cloves of garlic. Next, we can add something else that gives pickles their distinct flavor, dill. I am going to grab a few springs from a bunch and chop off the dirty bottom parts
Place the garlic and dill into a jar and I decided to add some mustard seeds and black peppercorns. These are optional but will bolster that pickely flavor.
Alright as before begin preparing the cucumbers by cutting off the blossom end.
Then place them into the jar, making sure to stuff as many in as fit. And then pour the brine in and add a little more dill if you want. I had a little weight to help submerge the cucumbers for this one. Alright, let’s place both jars into the sunshine and return 5 days later.
Results!
Alright, 5 days later, we can see well certainly something happened. Let’s start with homemade pickles. They turned out awesome, nice, and crunchy with a fresh vinegary taste. The garlic in here is definitely noticeable, and I enjoyed these quite a bit.
Fun fact, I learned that if you pickle garlic it turns blue, fun.
Now let’s see about the pickles created by simply placing them into pickle juice.
Wellllll .. recycled pickle juice pickles got a little cloudy, I did a lot of research, and apparently, this is just dead lactobacillus and is entirely harmless.
When making pickles, you want to avoid them if there is mold, the pickles are mushy or severely discolored and also going to by smell. THey should have a nice fresh pickly smell, if they don’t you may have a dud batch.
I however didn’t want to blindly poison one of you, so I did eat a few of these and I didn’t have any issues, so it is just weirdness in how it looks.
Now how do they compare. Well maybe not surprisingly, the spices they used as to what I used were different, so the the flavor was different. Mine was distinctly more garlicy.
Alright, both pickles turned out great, and I do recommend that you can just place pickles directly into pickle juice, however, as you can see, it’s super easy to make it yourself, so you may as well. Especially because you can flavor it however you want, wanna make it spicy, add some peppers, wanna make it 10 times more garlicky, you know what to do.
Well that’s it for this week,I hope you enjoyed this, alright see you guys next week bai!
Condensed Recipe:
Ingredients:
6-8 small cucumbers
1.5 cups [350 mL] of distilled vinegar
0.5 oz [15 grams] of salt
1 cup [250 mL] of water
Dill bunch
4 cloves of garlic
2 tablespoons mustard seeds (optional)
1 tablespoon of peppercorns