In a pickle

There’s just something about cucumber pickles that capture me. I love them, sour or sweet. But its one of those foods I haven’t quite cracked the culinary code on. Seeing Alton Brown devote an entire episode to dill pickles made me want to take it for a whirl. Several years ago, I tried with Alton’s Kinda Sorta Sours from Good Eats. They were great bread and butter pickles, but for as much as I enjoy all pickles, true sour dills rank as my top favorite pickles.

My mom also loves pickles. She often speaks of ‘salt brine pickles’ her grandmother made in an old butter churn stowed away in the basement. Several year ago, I must have been in college then, a neighbor gave her a boatload of cukes and his mother’s recipe for the famous salt brine pickles. About all I remember from the recipe was a lot of salt and alum, some sort of chemical that prevented the cukes from turning soft. Taste-wise all I remember is salt! Dang salty! So salty I couldn’t eat them. The other type of pickles my mom favors are garlic dills. She used to buy these big pickles from the local megamarket’s deli. The store is gone and so are the pickles.

The attempt to decode the culinary mystery of dill pickles started with the Good Eats episode Dill-icious. The pickles Alton began the show with looked and acted a lot like the ones my mom made years ago. But the major difference was the addition of spices, fresh dill, dill seed and garlic.

Armed with the knowledge from Alton, I ventured to make my pickles. I decided against making the crock-type pickles in favor of the ones for the refrigerator. One, I didn’t have a vessel for such an operation. Two, that’s a lot of pickles. Three, if I screwed up less to dispose of.

Happily, the mood to make these pickles struck me in early July. A perfect time because local veggies were coming into area farmers markets, I would have some fine cukes and local to boot. Upon selecting just the right amount of the long green veggie, I headed home to prep.

This just so happened to be the week of going to Nashville to see Alton! On Wednesday I made the brine. Since I had only about two pounds of cukes, I halved the brine recipe. In three fine mason jars, I placed the fresh dill, dill seed, peppercorns, spices and garlic. In went the cuke spears followed by the brine.

Now, Alton tells us, using this method, the pickles will be like the ones delis serve. My hopes are high at this point, I just adore those types of pickles. Well with leaving of Nashville on that Friday, the pickles were going to sit a little longer than the ‘couple of days’ as recommended by Alton.

I decided to let them stay in the fridge for a week. Then, I took a core sample. They still tasted more like cucumbers than pickles. I was a bit sad. But, I was determined to make these pickles! I left them alone for another couple of weeks.

Until today. I needed some pickles for my tuna salad. I cracked open the jar, 3 weeks later.

What did I find?

Amazing. The cukes that were still a ‘little green’ and not pickles, today were tangy, salty, garlicky. In one word… sublime. Like a pickle should be. I let my mom try one, pickle devotee she is. The verdict? Well, she asked if she could have a whole spear then told me to expect them to disappear.

So I cracked the code! Thanks to Alton.

Now, I’m wondering… will the next batch be destined for koolicles?

I sure hope Feasting on Waves doesn’t have the Caribbean equivalent to koolicles.