My intention is to find my ideal brine for pickling most things. I like my pickles dilly. Very dilly. If I can figure out the correct baance of ingredients on the cucumber, I'll branch out and apply this to various pickling items.

I'd like to pickle a large supply of fiddleheads while they're available in the spring, but I might not have the brine down in time and will have to wing it before they disappear from the markets.

Round 1:

Jar #1
"Garlicy Dill"

-3 cucumbers quartered
-4 garlic cloves
-1-1.5 cups of water
-.5 cups distilled white vinegar
-2 heaping tbs kosher salt
-.5 tsp black peppercorns

VERDICT: Pretty good actually. Could maybe use more vinegar? Definitely enough salt and the garlic certainly stands out.

Jar #2
"Garlic Monsters!"

-3 cucumbers quartered
-4 garlic cloves
-1-1.5 cups of water
-.5 cups cider vinegar
-2 heaping tbs kosher salt
-.5 tsp black peppercorns

VERDICT: Also pretty good, just different. Garlic seems to somehow be even more prominent with these. Possibly too much garlic for the faint of heart, but not for me!

Jar #3
"Needs something extra"

-3 cucumbers quartered
-1.5 carrots quartered
-4 garlic cloves
-1-1.5 cups of water
-.5 cups distilled white vinegar
-1 heaping tbs kosher salt
-.5 tsp black peppercorns

VERDICT: a little bland. The redcution in salt is definitely noticeable. Gonna tweak it a bit and see if it improves. Maybe add some more salt and a little something extra like a dried red chili or two.

The next batch will go with the proportions of jars 1 + 2 with a little more play in the vinegar types, aromatics and other flavoring agents. All of these turned out SUPER garlicy. Which I am A.O.K. with. Make sure your S.O. is too if you're gonna make them tho...

The only downside to having used so much garlic is that it completely washed out the dill flavor-wise, so I don't have a good sense going forward if I should use more dill or stick with the same amount. Ah well, practice, practice, keep lots of notes and practice. Thank god pickles aren't bad for your cholesterol cuz I'm going to have eaten an ungodly amount before I've got this all figured out.

Andrew McLaughlin

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