![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Refrigerator Pickles
Aug. 15th, 2025 09:15 pmProper pickling of vegetables requires:
- sterilization of equipment
- proper canning technique
- proper measurement of salt, acid, and/or sugar, possibly including fiddly fermentation (aka luck with microorganisms).
And they last for months to years, and are very salty/sour/sweet.
Refrigerator pickles, on the other hand, need much less care and can taste much less extreme -- but they last weeks to months rather than months to years. And they need to be refrigerated, hence the name.
Over the last few days I have been turning local cucumbers into fair imitations of half-sours, garlic dills, bread-and-butter pickles, and the weird one which I call "boring pickles" -- salt, vinegar and turmeric, nothing else. Half my household likes them on sandwiches. They resemble the ones that low-end fast-food burger joints use.
And, for really near-term consumption, about three liters of chopped salad (the kind called, variously, Arab, Israeli, Shirazi, Serbian, Kachumber...) which I estimate will last three days.
- sterilization of equipment
- proper canning technique
- proper measurement of salt, acid, and/or sugar, possibly including fiddly fermentation (aka luck with microorganisms).
And they last for months to years, and are very salty/sour/sweet.
Refrigerator pickles, on the other hand, need much less care and can taste much less extreme -- but they last weeks to months rather than months to years. And they need to be refrigerated, hence the name.
Over the last few days I have been turning local cucumbers into fair imitations of half-sours, garlic dills, bread-and-butter pickles, and the weird one which I call "boring pickles" -- salt, vinegar and turmeric, nothing else. Half my household likes them on sandwiches. They resemble the ones that low-end fast-food burger joints use.
And, for really near-term consumption, about three liters of chopped salad (the kind called, variously, Arab, Israeli, Shirazi, Serbian, Kachumber...) which I estimate will last three days.
