Cancer Miracle: Power of the Pickle? 

Brine pickles are more than "Dill Pickles."

Did you know they can include so many different styles with many different ingredients?

Our grandparents' heads would spin seeing the variety of pickles you can make with the Perfect PIckler. And you get to watch the transformation; they sit on your countertop and ferment over a few days. Into the fridge and you're ready to eat. What is especially new, you don't need to put up a whole pantry of pickles.

Make them by the quart, as you like, all year round. Try a recipe from somewhere in the world that interests you. Then travel to another culture: make Japanese sushi ginger, then Eastern European borscht, and then Italian mixed pickles.

The world is your pickle, and the Perfect Pickler is your passport...

Finally! A comprehensive guide to lacto-fermentation — I like to call it brine pickling. Mastery of Brine Pickling is good for any type of fermenting device you might have or are deciding to purchase. The 28 page booklet with color is the perfect gift that keeps on giving. Learn the basics to brine pickling. New and traditional recipes with an accent on quick and easy.

Price - $4.99.

Test tape reads acidity in an instant — Looking through the Pickling Pal Mailbag I came across a note from a teacher who needed to know if her first pickling attempt was successful. She wanted something more than the “smell it and if it doesn’t smell like it shouldn’t” wisdom to share with her students. Here is the scoop on lacto-fermented or brine pickles.

A food with a pH of 4.6 or less is termed a high acid or acid food and will not permit the growth of bacterial spores. Foods with a pH above 4.6. are termed low acid and will not inhibit the growth of bacterial spores. By acidifying foods and achieving a final pH of less than 4.6, most foods are resistant to bacterial spoilage.

Actually, there is a scientific way that is readily available, if you ever worked with pH testers around swimming pools. Testing has become a satisfying conclusion to my pickling recipe. There are only a few indications for the home pickler to know if these microscopic minions have actually been successful.

• Brine slowly becomes cloudy over 4 days 1.
• pH (acidity) of the brine drops below 4.7

This tester works on a tear-off roll, good for hundreds of tests $10.95 per roll. 

Once lactic acid bacteria—the probiotic makers of your brine pickles—are done with primary fermentation, usually about four days, they have created an acidic environment. It’s just the way they like it. No other bacteria can get established once they have colonized your Perfect Pickler recipe. You might also feel comfort that your digestive tract also likes the same acidic environment.

One of the easiest and certain ways to determine the acidity of your just-finished pickles is with a pH test . I use a simple type that you dip into the finished pickle brine for a few seconds and then you match the strip color to the standard colors on the test kit. Presto! You have your reading in seconds.

Order yours today!

In Alsace in NE France, by the 16th century, “a trade existed known as surkrutschneider—literally, sauerkraut tailor—who would make their own individual recipes of kraut, using anise seeds, bay leaves, elderberries, fennel, horseradish, and other herbs and spices.”1 As a Perfect Pickler you are your own designated surkrutschneider.

Over time I have been honing ways to increase the brine capture in sauerkraut and slaw making with the Perfect Pickler, a canning jar fermentor. Traditional crock fermentors don’t face this situation as the brine has headroom to rise with the brine expansion that occurs in the early onset of fermentation.

Not so easy with the Perfect Pickler. But now we have developed an advanced technique to overcome this.

Here’s the overview. With a whole head of cabbage you carefully cut out the core to at least an inch thick. You then peel off and save the top two outer leaves, which are trimmed and used to hold down the shredded cabbage packed into the fermentor jar, leaving about 3-inches of headroom. The two leaves are trimmed to fit, and the cabbage core is used with the Spacer Cup (see photo) to keep all cabbage material below the brine. In effect, the Spacer Cup sits atop the cabbage core and when the Lid is threaded down, it holds the cabbage leaves and shredded cabbage below the brine. Over the next few days you can watch the brine climb all the way to the top of the jar, and even into the Spacer Cup. After fermentation is complete, you pour the collected brine back into the jar and all the brine will reabsorb into the kraut.

Brine created from a fresh, heavy fall cabbage can be extensive. After only one day, I smell the sweet kraut brine from my latest batch.

If you would like to have an advanced set of sauerkraut making directions, email me at: bill@perfectpickler.com.

1 History of Salt, by Mark Kurlansky

Salt of the Earth

Essay by Bill Hettig

There are two substances that comprise the core of life on this planet. All life arises and is sustained by them. Without either there would be no life on Earth. Salt and water are the same two substances needed to ferment pickles. From the simplest to the most complex life forms, these are the sustainers of life.

In a Bible passage Lot's wife was turned to salt when she turned and looked at the towns of Sodom and Gomorrah. Actually, she turned back into salt. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust to a scientist translates into "minerals to minerals and salt to salt." That's what we are, mostly salt and water.

“God sent down four blessings from the sky,” the Prophet Muhammad said. “Iron, fire, water, and salt.” In brine pickling, also known as lacto-fermentation, water is mixed with salt to bring forth life; primal life.

Human blood plasma and lymph and most of our internal fluids are remarkably similar to ocean waters. We can be revived with a saline solution should we lose a lot of blood.

To understand how salt and water in the presence of vegetables makes pickles is complex and deeply fascinating. Minerals act like a battery charge when in the presence of water. Technically, there are ions and cations (plus + and minus - charged molecules) that provide the juice to propel fermentation. When a pickling fermentor is charged with salt, water, and then vegetables are added; a spontaneous primal dance begins. The concentration of mineral ions in the brine is greater than in the liquid within plant cells, which causes the cellular plant fluid to be drawn out. This liquid contains complex carbohydrates. Lactic acid bacteria, which live mutually on these vegetables, are quick to consume these carbs and begin to proliferate in colonies by the billions.

The minerals in sea salt (over 70 different minerals in unrefined ocean borne sea salt) also provide ionically charged minerals by which the bacteria can proceed to further metabolize the plant carbs 

Bacteria have no digestive organs, instead they produce enzymes that spill out from their bodies and break up these carbs where they can be reabsorbed by the bacteria. In turn, these enzymes act like catalysts in the presence of minerals and further create complex nutrients from this rich broth. They literally turn salt or minerals into food.

Not all the sea salt is converted, nor are all the carbohydrates converted. But there is a right amount of salt to water that produces this primal food. In addition, the vitamins in the vegetables become more bioavailable to us—we are making a multi-vitamin-mineral-enzyme-probiotic food—from just salt, water, and common vegetables. The salt that remains, for those who are salt sensitive, does not need to be consumed. What little salt that is in the pickled food is the kind of salt that we want in our bodies. Some sport teams are taking to drinking actual pickle brine, instead of factory made "electrolytic drinks or sport drinks," because it is not only delicious, but it replaces the minerals lost due to respiration and sweating. Not only is salt not a bad food, the double negative is for emphasis, salt is a good food. I mean unrefined, sea salt—rich in macro and micro minerals.

Refined table salt (NaCl) refined to 99.99 percent purity is not a food at all, but a food grade industrial chemical. The body can digest it, but not without health consequences. This is the substance that lends all salt a bad name. Unrefined sea salt provides additional minerals that the human body can assimilate through the action of our own gut bacteria (in the trillions of population), the same way it is performed in lacto-fermentation; they create enzymes with these mineral complexes, which in turn provides our cells with probiotic nourishment. Those peoples that eat live-cultured foods—like brine pickles—on a regular basis are the long-lived peoples of the Earth.

There are some who try to pickle without using salt, which can have unpredictable results. It is like composting, any and all microbes can evolve and prosper. Instead of fermentation, you may get rotting. There are other means to pickling using other ferment mediums, like whey in dairy, or vinegar, or specialized probiotic cultures. If there is a salt intolerance, you may find these methods satisfactory. Here is a simple graph that illustrates a great discovery far back in time:

The Chinese discovered over two millennium ago, that about a 5 percent brine solution brings out beneficial lactic acid bacteria and once they become established, create an environment unique and hostile to other microbes. They even describe the optimum temperature, 71 to 64 F. (22 to 18 C.). The Chinese spread the recipe for salted cabbage throughout the Old World and as culture travels, it came to the West. Brine pickling is again becoming a populist hobby and is a welcome back to an incredible edible food.

When you eat a mouth-watering, sour pickle, your whole body is telling you that this is a good thing. You are the salt of the earth.

© 2010, Bill Hettig
"You are the salt of the earth" - Jesus, Sermon on the Mount
Muhammad quote from the Quran

Hidden Pickling Tool in Your Tool Caddy

I am ever in search of not having to buy yet another kitchen gadget. It’s kind of upside-down to search and not purchase, but for every tool you own, you have many ways to use it creatively. Take coarsely grinding or cracking spices. This is an important task in pickling. Cracking them allows more of the aromatics into the brine. If you want flavor but not the grit of the spice, crack and place spices at the bottom of the vessel. This will flavor the brine as the microscopic gas bubbles ride up from the bottom stirring and flavoring at the same time.

Sometimes you don’t need to dirty up your spice grinder. Instead, pull out your trusty garlic press (you have one I hope?) Use it to crack coriander, cumin, peppercorns, allspice and other dried spices.

If you want more direct flavoring alternative, encase the spice blend using one of the following techniques:

• cheese cloth packets
• fabric remnant packets
• sealable tea bag blanks
• washable cotton muslin bags

Prepare the recipe spice blend and add it to one or more packets. It’s a good idea to divide the spices into three separate bags and disperse them throughout the recipe mix. They are easy to remove and will not discolor the recipe or create a mouthful of cracked spices as a taste surprise.

To recap, place your cracked spices in the bottom of the pickling jar, or fashion packets to add throughout the recipe.

Pickling with Ferments as the Brine

A letter from the Pickling Pal Mailbag noted that some of the recipes offered didn’t seem to produce much pickling action—no noticeable bubbles seen through the glass jar. Introducing another form of lacto-fermentation. Sometimes known as secondary fermentation or indirect fermentation, we use fermented liquids as the main brine ingredient.

It is interesting to note most Asian and Indochinese cultures do not use table salt directly on their food. Instead they create fermented sauces with salt as the fermentor. You know some of them as soy sauce, fish sauce, miso, tamari. Vinegar is not lacto-fermented, but is also used to pickle food. They can be used in combination.

These fermented sauces work well in brine pickling fermentors. There is one fine example in your Perfect Pickler Instruction-Recipe Booklet and duplicated in our web-based recipe section. East-West Pickled Onions make a great pickled condiment by using soy sauce and brown rice vinegar. This recipe is designed to be a live-culture recipe so you need to use the types of liquids that have not been pasteurized. This is not as common in the modern, global pantry. Most makers pasteurize their sauces. Not to worry—there are products that meet our needs. Check with your local health-food store to locate. Some brands list their product as unpasteurized, otherwise it is not always discernible. I like a few brands and list them in the resource section at the end of the newsletter.

The East-West Pickled Onion recipe creates an utterly delicious sauce after fermentation to be used in stir-fry and dipping sauces. I love to add it along with some of the minced pickled onion in scrambled eggs or tofu. Use it on plain cooked grains with minced chives or scallions and you have a fermented sauce and condiment to liven the dish.

Use to marinate chicken, tofu, fish, and pork by mixing a teaspoon of cornstarch or arrowroot powder to a quarter cup of the brine. Coat the protein and let it rest for a half-hour or so, then cook as part of a stir-fry to include other Asian vegetables, like bok choy, scallions, ginger.

Sources for unpasteurized soy sauce:

Selina Naturally

Goldmine Natural Foods

Kushi Store