Fermented Cucumber Pickles (and Coriander Sucks)

I tried my hand at fermented pickles a couple weeks ago. They're very easy. If you're lazy like me, they're the perfect lazy person's self-preserved food. You just cram some small cucumbers into a quart jar, cover them in brine, throw in some spices...boom boom boom. The friendly, completely harmless bacteria does all the work for you.

Here's what you do:

1. Get small cucumbers. Ones that will fit comfortably into a quart jar with enough room for at least three cucumbers. Farmer's markets have these. So does Walmart.
2. Sterilize some quart jars. You know...wash them then boil them for about 15 minutes. 
3. Cram cucumbers into the sterilized quart jars. Stuff as many of those suckers as you can into the jar, so long as it's below the lip of the jar.
4. Pour brine into the quart jars.  Brine is basically 3 tablespoons of pickling salt dissolved in 4 cups of water. Pour enough brine in to cover the cucumbers.
5. Toss in the spices. Dill. Mustard seed. Garlic. Whatever. Do what you want here. I made the horrible mistake of adding coriander seed to my last batch of pickles. Turns out coriander is cilantro. I swear to god I didn't know this. I HATE cilantro. Blech...who decided cilantro/coriander qualifies as food? YUCK!
6. Place the jar lid and the ring. I often rip off a jar sized piece of cabbage and put it over the pickles to hold them under the water before putting the jar lid on. 

And that's it. The initial stuff takes about 30 minutes, tops...most of which is sitting there waiting for water to boil to sterilize your jars. After step 6 just let those pickles sit there for two weeks and let the lactobacillus critters that hang around in the air turn the cucumbers into pickles. 

Burp the jars after a couple days......the process of fermentation produces CO2 which builds up in the jars. It's good to let some of that out to release pressure after about 48 hours.

Just remember....don't use coriander if you hate cilantro. In fact, cilantro should be banished from the world.

Within a few days of putting the cucumbers in the brine, they'll start to produce bubbles. After about 3 or 4 days the brine will get cloudy from the friendly bacteria....don't worry about that. After a couple weeks you'll have real, naturally fermented pickles.