Dill Pickles (An Unapologetic Cookbook)
Black Pepper adds a lot of color
Ever try to make your own pickles?
Time: 20 Minutes
Ingredient Availability: 4/5
Difficulty: 1/5
I think everyone should try pickling something at home at least once in their life. Sure, this was my first time, but it’s so easy that there’s little reason not to. The possibilities of pickled things you can make are nearly endless, so if you want to spice up a sandwich or salad, pickling some vegetables and adding them is a great way to do just that. This particular recipe if from Joshua Weissman’s An Unapologetic Cookbook and I made it in preparation to make his recipe for Cubanos.
Key Ingredients and Omissions:
Just missing the water
This recipe loses a point in ingredient availability for asking you to use Kirby cucumbers. I wasn’t able to find these at the grocery store that I went to, and I wouldn’t be surprised if you had a similar issue. Other than that, everything else in this recipe was pretty standard and easy to find.
Tools:
Shape knife
Jars or other containers
Cooking Review:
Prep: 5 minutes
The prep for this recipe was really just peeling the garlic and slicing the vegetables (cucumbers). The garlic and cucumbers were then added to jars along with the dill.
Boiling Brine and Jarring: 14 minutes + cooling
In a pot, I brought the vinegar and water to a boil along with the salt and black pepper. Once boiling, I poured it over the vegetables and let them cool with a piece of paper towel on top to keep the vegetables submerged. At this point, the pickles were done.
Analysis:
I ended up making a some more of the brine to fill my second jar and used what was left over to make pickled carrots. As far as the dill pickles go, I really enjoyed the flavor, which included aspects of both the garlic and dill. I’m not sure if the black pepper added much of anything, though. The pickles were slightly sweet, but the acidity was a little too intense, slightly burning my throat on the way down. Texturally, they weren’t as rigid as a freshly cut cucumber, but they still had a nice crunch to them. The carrots came out much the same. I didn’t add the garlic to the pickled carrots batch, so the flavor was a little less interesting, but there were still good overall. I’m going to give this recipe a 8/10. These are definitely better than store bought pickles and take very little effort. The main drawback is that the acidity makes the eating experience uncomfortable on the back end. Maybe the vinegar needed to be cooked more or just less needed to be used in order to fix this problem.
