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My Maternal Grandmother had several 15(?) gallon crockpots in her kitchen with pickles and sauerkraut. She put bricks on the top of the Crocks and when the pickles and Kraut were finished the tops would start rattling and we knew we would want to leave the house when the lids came off. How can anything that smells so bad taste so good? That was the Kraut the pickles smelled and tasted great.
I just use the fermented pickle recipe in the Ball Blue Book. Not the brined pickles, which you have to soak to get the salt out, but the lower salt vinegar and brine recipe. You can do a small batch in a glass gallon jar. Just use a ziploc bag filled with brine as a weight. You can also season them to taste. I like a spicier pickle, so in a 4 gallon crock I sliced 4 jalopeno peppers in half and added a bunch of garlic cloves. They went right into the pot with the cukes and dill, and the flavor spread nicely. It takes about 6 weeks to ferment up a nice sour bunch of pickles, then you just boil the brine and hot pack/water bath them to kill the yeast. The only change I make to the book recipe is to add alum, because I like a crunchier pickle. In prep, scrub the cukes and snip off the blossom end, which contains enzymes that will soften the pickle. Also, the fresher the cukes the better your pickles will be.
I have 4 gallons of traditional sauerkraut going right now, and 1 gallon of spiced kraut. I don't even bother to can the sauerkraut, I just put the crock in an unheated garage where the fermentation stops. It will be ready by Thanksgiving, and any that is left by the end of March will just get thrown out.
Any fresh fermented food is a wonderful probiotic. People who eat fermented foods have a lower incidence of stomach cancer. Plus, it tastes great.
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