Hmong Red, Boston Pickling, Spacemaker 80 - mini review

[applestar]

Made my first jar of pickles the other day. Used 2@ grape and cherry leaves.
[img]https://i290.photobucket.com/albums/ll272/applesbucket/Image4647.jpg[/img]

[Cuke]

Those look good applestar!I also canned a few days ago,got two pints and two quarts.Not bad for the beginning of the harvest season.

[applestar]

"Country Russian Half Sours"

Duh_Vinci, the kids and I tasted my first batch of pickles made on 7/19. Not canned just lacto-fermented and refrigerated.

DD10: "Mama, these are the pickles YOU made? They taste like the ones from the store. They taste Great! These taste BETTER! " and to her sister "These are Mama's pickles. Try them, they're DEE-licious!"
The kids are tough critics and these pickles passed with flying colors! Thanks so much.

BTW -- I've been experimenting as usual. Today, I tried making a jar of Bread and Butter Pickles and another jar of tweaked CRHS. I added radish seed pods, green cilantro seed heads, and dried cilantro/coriander seeds. Today's CRHS was wave sliced like the B&B's and two sprigs of peppermint flowers were added along with the rest of the ingredients. I also boiled the brine in the pot that I first made the B&B's so there's a hint of B&B brine in it, and the jar I used was the jar I used to store curry powder in it -- just transferred the last of it to a smaller spice jar -- so I decided not to wash it out to see what happens (I know I know, this one will be eaten right away. I did thoroughly clean the lid.) Hmm... Now that I'm reading over what I did to that last CRHS, I think I should've done the peppermint flower experiment separately from the spice combo experiment. After tasting that first jar, I know I have to make more of the ORIGINAL recipe as well. Good thing more cukes are on their way.

Cuke, I forgot about the icing technique until I was working on the B&B's. I chilled the CRHS slices too. It'll be interesting to see how that jar comes out.

[applestar]

Duh_vinci, what do you do with the brine/pickle juice after you've finished eating the pickles? Throw it out? Re-use? Use in some other way?

Came back to add: I had one of those moments. I thawed a couple of bags of DH's vac-packed trout for lunch, but decided only one bag was needed. So I cut open the 2nd vac-pack bag, rinsed the fish several times, then dumped the brine, herbs and all in the bag and stuffed the leaves, dill heads, and garlic inside the belly cavities of the two trout. I've put the bag back in the fridge meat drawer and will grill them for dinner. I've NEVER done this before and don't know of any recipe remotely resembling it except for the French Blue Trout, but I think, in theory, they should turn out tasty.... Stay tuned.

[Cornfed]

Here's a recipe very similar to mine I found on the internet,you can even calculate the servings.There's even more recipes on that site too.

https://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Dill-Pickles/Detail.aspx

Cuke is correct that is a awesome pickle recipe. I made pickles this year for the first time and used the same recipe, I made about 25 quarts of pickles and 15 pints of pickled green beans. They all turned out fantastic. And very easy to make.

Cornfed

[applestar]

Well, I couldn't grill them last night so I baked one of them in a 400ºF oven for 40 min. this morning. It turned out very tasty. Somewhat reminiscent of smoked trout except moist. Marinating for 24 hrs seem to have allowed the brine to fully permeate the fish. The dilly pickle flavor is there but in a pleasant way (you do have to like the smell of dill pickles though). I really can't stop eating it. I'd consider it a success.

It should be stressed though that this was a lacto-fermented active culture brine, not heat processed/canned and certainly not store bought with possible artificial additives.

DV -- sorry I'm taking this thread WAY off topic.

[jmoore]

Wow! Fantastic pictures. These are definitely magazine worthy!

I'm gonna have to try some of these different varieties next year. I think the smaller ones might be a good choice. I've got Burpless going now.

[gixxerific]

Looking up pickle recipes I came across this. I saw it last year and it struck a chord with me again.

But where would someone find such things as "2 leafs of Black or Red currant
- 2 leafs of Sour Cherry" ?

I have tons of cumbers even the Homong's but don't know where to go from here.

[applestar]

I LOVE DV's recipe! Can't wait for my baby sized cukes to get bigger!

I've subbed wild Grape leaves, wild black cherry leaves, volunteer cherry leaves, or blackberry and raspberry leaves.

Hmmm I seem to remember saying one of these -- or something else -- imparted strong flavor that I didn't like. I'll post if I can find the ref. Nevermind there it is a few posts up -- it was the peppermint flowers.

[gixxerific]

Thanks Apple but again I am at a loss the only things I have even close to those would be blue berry leaves or maybe black cherry tomato leaves.

Are the leaves a necessity or can one go without them?

[applestar]

I wouldn't use tomato leaves. Maybe plum leaves or peach (related to cherry) leaves? Or perhaps strawberry (related to raspberry) leaves? OK, or bay leaves (from your spice cupboard).

Blueberry leaves might work though....

... currants are related to gooseberries....

[gixxerific]

I do have strawberries.