Preserving the Harvest: Pickling and Fermentation

When you hear the word pickle, what comes to mind? For most Americans, it is probably a dill pickled cucumber, but as we are about to see, the world of pickling is much more vast. Pickling includes both preserving food by submerging it in vinegar or by fermentation in a brine. In vinegar pickling, the acidity helps prevent spoilage by inhibiting the activity of enzymes and many microorganisms.

Do you remember when we talked about preserving foods by salting? With fermentation, salt is added to liquid to create a brine and an environment where lactic acid bacteria naturally present on fruits and vegetables can thrive. As they ferment the sugars in the food, these bacteria produce lactic acid, which increases acidity and helps preserve the food. We’ll explore both methods in more detail below.

How Vinegar Pickling Preserves Food

Fridge pickles are my favorite way to pickle. It requires very little effort and just a few extra ingredients: vinegar, salt, sugar, and spices. Mostly I pickle peppers, and we eat them on top of everything from sandwiches to enchiladas, soups to salads. This year I’m pickling jalapenos, pepperoncinis, and any green chiles that don’t seem meaty enough to roast. As I harvest them, I save them in the refrigerator until I have enough to fill a quart jar.

The nice thing about fridge pickles is that you don’t have to take the extra step to can them. Assuming you have room to keep them refrigerated, they will likely not last long enough to spoil. Refrigerator pickles should be kept refrigerated, and how long they keep will depend on the recipe you followed. You’re looking for the usual culprits: off odors, unusual texture, or signs of mold. Discard if you ever find your pickles have been kept too long. They can be added to the compost pile.

I live at a high altitude (7200’) and canning requires extra processing time. The added cooking time can soften the pickles, so another plus for the fridge pickle is the veggies remain more crisp, naturally. To store pickles outside of the refrigerator, they should be canned. We’ll cover canning in a future article on food preservation.

I usually use apple cider vinegar or white vinegar or a combination of the two. If I’m making a dill pickle, I’m more likely to use white vinegar. The bread-and-butter pickle recipe I use calls for apple cider vinegar. In a pickle, I have used rice wine vinegar or sushi vinegar. Red wine vinegar would be a nice addition to your pickling pantry, but you should remember the red color of the vinegar will color the vegetables you are pickling. It works very well for pickling red onions and beets.

When you’ve eaten all of the vegetables, don’t toss the leftover vinegar. It can be used in the place of vinegar for other recipes like marinating meats or salad dressing. It will have the added flavor of the vegetables and spices you pickled.

What Can You Pickle?

Just about anything. Cucumbers are the obvious answer, but have you heard of giardiniera? It’s an Italian condiment of pickled vegetables that usually includes: cauliflower, carrots, celery, and peppers. The veggies are brined and then marinated in vinegar and oil.

Roasted beets and beet stems also make a lovely pickle. I’ve even found recipes for pickled tomatoes and fennel.

Pickling can elevate a food item that you may toss in the compost, otherwise. For example, the beet stem pickles I mentioned above, garlic scapes, pickling seeds like capers or nasturtiums, or the pods produced by radishes and arugula. Even watermelon rinds can be pickled.

Picking the Perfect Pickling Salt

It used to be I could always find boxes of Pickling Salt at the grocery store, but since the pandemic, it has been scarce in my neck of the woods. Recently, I found a sea salt that was marked kosher for pickling. With your choice of salt, you are looking for a natural salt that does not have any additives. Table salt often has added anti-caking agents that could discolor the brine. I use Himalayan pink salt on my table, and it is discouraged in pickling for the same reason. This time, the minerals are what will possibly change the color and texture of the finished pickle.

Kosher or sea salt can be substituted if you’re in a pickle. However, it is recommended that you add the salt based on weight in this case, as the size of the salt crystals would differ from a traditional pickling salt. In the Bread & Butter recipe above the substitution of Kosher salt isn’t as critical as the pickle is finished in vinegar, which is the agent that prevents bacteria from forming. In the kimchi recipe I’m about to reference, and fermenting in general, the concentration of salt in the recipe is more critical.

How Fermentation Preserves Food

You may be familiar with fermentation when it comes to converting yeast to alcohol in the production of beer or wine. Did you know that fermentation can also be responsible for pickling? In the case of pickling fruits and vegetables, Lactobacillus bacteria convert sugars to lactic acid. The resulting acidic environment helps inhibit the growth of unwanted and potentially harmful microorganisms.

Back sometime around 2010, I went on a wild fermentation trip with the help of guides like Sandor E. Katz of Wild Fermentation and Amanda Feifer of phickle.com. My kitchen was literally bubbling with kombucha, sourdough starter, and pickled/preserved everything. I’ve since dialed back my ‘experiments’ as I don’t have a partner who is quite as wild about wild fermentation, but the knowledge I gained has left me feeling empowered. I know now how to start a sourdough starter if I don’t have yeast. I can pickle anything without the use of vinegar. These are simple techniques that have been used for centuries.

From Growing Dome to Fermentation Jar

A successful garden has a way of giving you more than you can eat at once. Pickling and fermentation allow that abundance to keep feeding you long after the immediate harvest has passed.

Our gardeners here at Growing Spaces have just started our cabbage for the fall, so when I wanted to ferment something for this article, I looked toward the bok choy growing in the 22’ Dome. Combined with some of the radishes growing in the 33’, Thai chiles from the 26’, and carrots and Lumbre chiles from my own garden, I had the makings for kimchi.

At its simplest, vegetable fermentation involves keeping produce submerged in a properly salted brine while beneficial microorganisms produce lactic acid. The exact salt concentration, fermentation time and storage instructions depend on what you're making, so I recommend starting with a tested recipe.

The kimchi recipe adds another layer as the large vegetables are submerged in a brine for 24 hours and then drained. Next, a paste is made from the ‘spices’: ginger, alliums like green onions and garlic, apples or rice paste. Everything is recombined, packed into your vessel, and the brine is poured back on top.

I usually use a jar within a jar, to act as a weight to hold down the veggies, while they sit on the counter for the next few days and ferment. I’m daily checking to see if bubbles are forming: that’s good! Or any discoloration or mold forming: that’s bad! After about three days, I try to taste it daily to decide on its optimal whang. It will continue to ferment and change stored in the fridge, but not as quickly as it did on the countertop.

Do you remember when we touched on salting in a previous article and we preserved lemons? That was about two months ago. I am happy to say they are still looking and tasting great. This is a good example of fermenting citrus and fruit. So far, I’ve only added them to a tartar sauce, but I am dreaming up how to use them next. Maybe in some hummus?

What are your favorite things to pickle or ferment? I’d love to hear what’s pickling in your kitchen this fall.

Have More to Preserve?

Pickling and fermenting are only two ways to make a garden harvest last. Explore our Preserving the Harvest series for more ways to can, freeze, dry and store homegrown food.

Explore More Food Preservation Methods