Old-Fashioned, Crunchy, Fermented Garlic-Dill Pickles

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By    –   Gnowgflins

Pickles are one of my favorite ferments!

In this video, you’ll see beautiful fermented Garlic-Dill Pickles. They are so easy to make at home.

And by the way…

These are NOT your regular vinegar pickles you’ll find in the grocery store.

Nope!

Instead, these are fermented with salt. Once pickled, there’s an explosion of vitamins, enzymes, probiotics, beneficial acids, and most importantly… a delicious crunch!

These are so good, and they’re really easy to make!

Here’s the video, and below that is the written out recipe…

By the way, in the video I mentioned this FREE Fermenting Formulas Cheat Sheet — it’s a gift from me to you. Here’s a link to grab it.

Fermented Garlic-Dill Pickles

These pickles are fermented with salt for an explosion of vitamins, enzymes, probiotics, beneficial acids, and most importantly… a delicious crunch!
Makes 1 gallon pickles in this 1-gallon stoneware crock from Ohio Stoneware.
Author: Wardee Harmon
Recipe type: Cultured, Snacks
Ingredients
  • pickling cucumbers (or thin-skinned Mediterranean cucumbers) — enough to fill the crock (I needed a few dozen) and as fresh as possible
  • ½ gallon good water (filtered if municipal water)
  • 6 tablespoons unrefined sea salt
  • 12 peeled garlic cloves (optional, for flavor)
  • 4 teaspoons dill seed (optional, for flavor)
  • 1 teaspoon black tea leaves (or a few fresh grape or oak leaves)
Instructions
  1. Submerge cucumbers in cold water for 10 to 30 minutes to crisp them up.
  2. Meanwhile, make the brine by combining the water and sea salt.
  3. Stir well to dissolve the salt.
  4. Cut the ends off each cucumber.
  5. Start packing the crock with cucumbers.
  6. Every so often, sprinkle in some dill seeds, a few cloves of garlic, and some black tea. If you’d prefer, omit the dill seeds and garlic and add celery seed or peppercorns, etc. instead.
  7. Keep packing the cucumbers, stopping to sprinkle more of the other ingredients along the way.
  8. When the crock is full to within 3 to 4 inches of the top, stop adding ingredients.
  9. Pour the brine over all of it so the cucumbers are submerged.
  10. Place the stone weights on top — they will make sure the cucumbers stay below the surface of the brine.
  11. Add the lid of the crock.
  12. Now leave the cucumbers to ferment at room temperature for 3 to 7 days. (Shorter if temps are warmer; longer if cooler. In the video, it was winter and the house was cooler so I fermented these 4 to 5 days.)
  13. When they are done, remove the lid and plates/weights. It is completely normal to see bubbles at the top and also for the brine to get cloudy.
  14. Taste your pickles! They should be crunchy and salty. They may not be fully pickled through the entire cucumber but that’s okay. They’ll continue to “pickle” in cold storage.
  15. Transfer to a gallon sized glass jar and store in the fridge. You can eat them right away or let them age longer in the fridge. Enjoy!

More About The 1-Gallon Stoneware Crock

I used the 1-gallon stoneware crock kit from Ohio Stoneware in this demo.

Hands down, it’s one of my favorite kitchen tools. We ferment in it all the time — sauerkraut (video demo and recipe here), pickles, kimchi, and more.

I highly recommend it!

Thank you to Ohio Stoneware for providing it and for being such a wonderful supporter of fermented foods. ????