Confession: I’m newly obsessed with fermenting. I’ve been fermentation-curious for a few years now, but just this week I’ve finally taken the plunge. I thought it would be hard. I thought it might be messy. (I had heard rumors of exploding pickle jars.) I thought I might accidentally poison my entire family. I thought I needed an expensive crock like this. (OK, I knew I didn’t need such an expensive crock. I just WANTED that expensive crock.)

After another disappointing batch of vinegar pickles, which make me MAD because that means I wasted precious pickling cucumbers from our garden to make mediocre pickles, I finally decided to educate myself a bit on what it would actually take to make proper sour (lacto-fermented) pickles. You know what it takes? Not much. Certainly not a $100+ German crock.

To get started I borrowed Wild Fermentation from the library. It came with a fascinating DVD. Sandor Ellix Katz is charming and informative and really, really excited about sauerkraut. If he ever gives a workshop in Portland, I’m going. (I might actually be in danger of becoming a sauerkraut groupie.) Turns out you can use plain old canning jars for fermentation, and you can ferment just about any vegetable. And you can NOT get anyone sick by fermenting vegetables. Botulism? Strictly a risk from canning, not from lacto fermentation. I tried it out two days ago with three wee pickling cukes that were ready in the garden that day:

I also gathered about a cup of nasturtium seed pods to make “capers.” In the book, he insists this works. I tried one today and while they aren’t ready yet, it was tasty, so I’m optimistic:

You place the vegetables and some garlic (and dill, for the pickles) in the jars and top them with brine, then weigh the vegetables down with smaller jars filled with water. The idea is that the vegetables have to stay submerged, or whatever is exposed to the air will mold.

Making small batches in jars is great, but I want to make larger batches of pickles, and great big crocks of sauerkraut. And my birthday is coming up on the 20th. So Billy and I agreed we’d invest in a couple of crocks–not the expensive ones, though. In the DVD, Sandor (may I call you Sandor?) makes an interesting point in favor of the less-expensive crocks, like this one. With the fancy ones with a water channel designed to seal out the air and so avoid a layer of scum that has to be skimmed off, you need to close it up and basically leave it alone until the pickle is “done.” This means you can’t taste it as it goes to learn what “done” means for your particular palate and preferences. Since he assures the viewer that the presence of mold is not at all dangerous, this was a good enough argument for me. I opted for the lidless crocks. You invert a plate over the contents to hold them under the brine, and then weigh the plate down with a water-filled jar.

Today I bought one of these one-gallon crocks. Portlanders won’t be surprised to learn I paid less than what’s listed on that site at Mirador: $19.50. They didn’t have any two- or three-gallon crocks in stock today, and won’t have them for a few weeks. I’m impatient to try making sauerkraut, so I think I’ll be heading over to Urban Farm tomorrow, where I saw the larger sizes at a good price.

I brought the one-gallon crock home today and went out to the garden and lo! There were pickling cukes ready! Not enough to make a full batch, but enough to make it worth my while.

Per the instructions in Wild Fermentation, I covered the cukes, 2 heads of garlic (also from our garden), and three heads of dill (sadly, not from our garden because I accidentally killed our dill by planting it out front where I often forget to water) with brine. I used six tablespoons of sea salt to 1/2 gallon of water.

None of our plates fit into the crock quite right, but a neighbor’s plate, which had arrived at our home with a lovely little zucchini bread loaf on it, fit perfectly. (So…uh…DC? If you’re reading this? I’ll get your plate back to you as soon as I can get to Goodwill and find one that’s the same size.) I covered the cukes with the plate and weighted it down with a pint jar filled with water.

And that’s it. I’ll check it, and the two jars, each day and skim off any mold that might form. I’ll give a little taste to check progress and learn how long we like our pickles to ferment.

Next up, sauerkraut! Then kimchi! Pickled beets! Pickled radishes! Pickled green beans!!!!!