At Tito’s we are always happy to hear about successful artisan pickle makers who are carrying on the great tradition of creating quality pickles.  The following article is a great example of this:

BY KEVIN KESSLER

THURSDAY, JULY 9, 2015 | http://www.villagevoice.com/

The smell of vinegar and salt is noticeable about halfway down the block, just past the handmade dumpling shop (10 for $2.50!). It’s a hot summer day, and the cheap pizza place next door to The Pickle Guys (49 Essex Street; 212-656-9739) isn’t open yet. Standing behind a few of the large red barrels that take up most of his store, Alan Kaufman is talking about a recent customer who’d asked him to pickle some daikon; “It just smelled weird, you know? I don’t know if I would do that again.”

Kaufman, with a friendly, everyman demeanor, is a man who knows about the relationship between salt and cucumbers. Since 1981, he has been wrist-deep in pickle barrels on the Lower East Side, in an area once known as the ‘Pickle District’. A Queens’s native, Kaufman got his start working at the two famed pickle-emporiums, Guss’ Pickles and L. Hollander and Sons.

A freelance commercial photographer throughout the 1980’s and 1990’s, Alan decided to close his photography studio permanently in 2000 and left Guss’ to open up the best pickle spot in NYC, The Pickle Guys. Kaufman tells theVoice, “When I first started working in this area (in 1981) there were four pickle places within two blocks, now we are the only pickle place that pickles on-premises”.

There are around 20 large red barrels situated in the small, sunken, first-floor shop. From sweet and crunchy bread-and-butter pickles, pickled sweet red peppers and tomatoes to eight types of pickled cucumbers, the pickle guys make over 30 varieties of pickled items.

Their biggest seller is still the whole sour pickles, the pickle which spends the longest time ‘pickling’, a process that takes three months; a ‘new pickle’ will spend one to ten days in the barrel. And don’t worry — you can also get half sours and ¾ sours. No vinegar is used for these cucumbers, which are sourced through the pickle guys own ‘cucumber broker’, who sources them from along the Eastern Seaboard and as far as Texas; two or three months out of the year they come from New York and New Jersey. The fresh cucumbers take a long bath in a mixture of water, salt, garlic and pickling spices. Although Kaufman doesn’t give exact proportions, the seasoning spices contain coriander seed, mustard seed, bay leaf and black peppercorns.
Kaufman greets just about every person who enters the store; “Want a pickle while you’re browsing?” he asks. The customers at Pickle Guys are diverse; from an older Jewish gentleman/David Crosby look-a-like contest winner who’s buying a large order of sauerkraut and full sours to take back upstate, to a younger lady getting a gallon of pickle brine for “pickle backs,” each one seems happy to be in the proximity of a great comfort food.

“We got a job where people really appreciate us,” Kaufman says. “Some people have a job where people just complain. I’m lucky.”

An Old World treat, pickles started arriving in this area of the Lower East Side in the early 1900’s, after Eastern European immigrants landed on nearby Ellis Island. “You didn’t need a store back then, you had your barrel on the corner and popped the lid,” Kaufman notes.

The pickles at Pickle Guys are the best in city for two reasons: they really care about their product, and they really know how to make it. Their famous sour pickles teeter on the precipice of sour and too-sour. And even after three months in a vat of water and salt, they still maintain their juiciness and bite. Pickled tomatoes, green and almost translucent, are juicy and crunchy, and somehow taste fresh and aged at the same time. The pickled pineapples, with flakes of red pepper floating on top of the barrel, are sweet and salty and spicy — there’s no better representation of pineapple in the city.

Around the holidays, the Pickle Guys make a few select items that the “old-timers” still yearn for, like fresh-ground horseradish made on the street outside, to russell borscht (fermented beet juice that is the base for borscht soup) to cabbage rolls that Kaufman describes as “like a Jewish burrito” .

In an ever-changing New York, Pickle Guys is a reminder of what the city once was; it’s the genuine article, with each pickle made by people who strive to be the best.

The Pickle Guys are kosher (local Rabbi Shmuel Fishelis visits weekly); they’re closed on Shabbat and ship nationwide. 

By Alixandra Caole Vila (philstar.com) | Updated July 7, 2015 – 2:08pm

MANILA, Philippines –  A study published in Psychiatry Research claims social anxiety may be eased by eating fermented foods like pickles.

Social anxiety is defined by Socialanxietyinstitue.org as the fear of interaction with other people that brings on self-consciousness and feelings of being negatively judged and evaluated which, as a result, leads to avoidance.

To find out whether fermented foods can reduce social anxiety, 700 students were given questionnaires, asking them about how much fermented food have they eaten for the past 30 days. Results showed that young adults who eat more fermented foods have fewer social anxiety symptoms. They also exercise more.

Normally, our mental state affects the way our whole body functions. Hence, anxiety has pounding heart, sweating, shaking, blushing, muscle tension, upset stomach and diarrhea as its effects. The study made it rather clear that the gut-brain connection is strong and significant.  According to the study, the probiotics or good bacteria in our digestive tracts can send a message to the brain and dictate the way we feel. Probiotics found in fermented food lead to more production of GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid), a chemical messenger that functions like anti-anxiety medications.

The next time you feel the social jitters have some of these fermented food items to make sure you don’t pass out: Sauerkraut a.k.a. fermented cabbage, pickles, yogurt, miso, tempeh, fermented onions, atchara or  pickled jalapenos.

The 4th of July parade in Lexington, MI features pickles in addition to candy and other items that are more traditionally seen handed out at parades.  This has to be one of the few parades in the country where pickles are featured and it seems like a great idea.  In addition to the kids and other pickle lovers who enjoy receiving the pickles those who are lucky enough to get asked to throw pickles into the crowd also enjoy their duties.  No word yet as to if these pickles being handed out are individually wrapped or what form of packaging they may be in.  This seems like an idea worth getting on board with and perhaps Texas Tito’s will bring this unique 4th of July tradition to New Braunfels, Texas and distribute individually packaged dill pickles to the large crowd that gathers every fourth of July for the parade.