When things don’t go quite according to plan
It all started so promisingly. Buoyed by the success of my sauerkraut, I was ready for another fermentation project. Looking through my book on fermenting, I decided on mustard and horseradish pickles – minus the horseradish, because I didn’t have any.
Photo credit: From Fermenting: A fully illustrated guide to good gut health, Fern Green
My inspiration, courtesy of my guidebook Fermenting: A fully illustrated guide to good gut health by Fern Green.
So far, so good…
The premise of the fermented pickle is pretty simple (more straightforward than sauerkraut for sure). Put some little cucumbers and flavourings in a clean jar, make a brine, pour the brine over the cucumbers and weigh them down to submerge them and wait a couple of weeks. What could possibly go wrong?
© Julie Anderson
The ingredients (L-R): Dill, small cucumbers, yellow mustard seeds, salt.
Initially, everything seemed fine. The pickles, covered in their brine and weighed down with two weights to ensure they stayed submerged, looked basically like the picture in the book, allowing for a lack of professional lighting.
Ready for lift-off, fermentation-wise.
Results may vary
A couple of days later, I checked in with my pickles to open them up as directed (releasing built up air is a big thing in fermentation). This was when I got the first inkling that all was not well with the pickles. Instead of vibrant green cucumbers quietly fermenting as suggested by the book, mine were, well, different (and not in a good way).
Decidedly cloudy wouldn’t you say?
This was not what I was expecting. Certainly, there was nothing in any of the sources I had consulted that would prepare me for a cloudy brine. Undaunted (at this point), I put it back in the cupboard, hoping that a couple more days would rectify the issue.
Now with added white floaty bits.
As it turns out, my foolproof strategy of ignoring the issue did not produce a reversal of the problem. Two days later, the cloudiness remained and now there were FLECKS floating on the surface. I was having flashbacks to the great sourdough failure of 2020 – thankfully the pickles didn’t smell like old socks at least.
In fact, it was the vaguely pleasant smell of dill that sent me to the internet for answers. Was there a chance that my pickles were still okay despite all evidence to the contrary?
A quick search of ‘why are my pickles cloudy with white flecks’ produced the answer. Turns out it’s not mould. It’s something called kahm yeast, which is a wild yeast commonly produced as a result of lacto-fermentation. It’s not ideal, but also not harmful. The recommendation is to scrape it off regularly, then pop it in the fridge when the fermentation is finished to prevent further growth. Various sources suggest that it is safe to eat, but can produce a slightly strange taste.
The finished product, and an observation
It’s fair to say that my enthusiasm for the pickles had waned considerably by this time. Still, I persisted, leaving the pickles to ferment for two weeks, scraping flecks every few days. And here is the finished product with the book’s pickles for comparison (see if you can spot the difference)
One of these things is not like the other one…
To be fair, my pickles actually look like pickles, whereas the pickles in the book are clearly a ‘before’ shot – the vibrancy of the cucumbers gives it away.
I think there’s a lesson here for an enthusiastic home cook. Things don’t always turn out perfectly, especially with something that involves chemical reactions, however you wouldn’t necessarily know this from reading blogs and cookbooks. In my guide to fermented foods, kahm yeast does not rate a mention, despite quite a bit of detail about lacto-fermentation.
I guess my issue is that, unlike cooking something from a recipe, fermentation is a bit more unpredictable. Anything can happen and sometimes it’s hard to know where you are on the scale of disaster. Are you at the ‘scrape off the white flecks and proceed as planned’ end or the ‘produces black mould that smells like old socks’ end? I would suggest that where you are matters, so it’s important to know what to expect.
Ta da!
In this case, according to my research, these pickles are fine to eat. So we tried them. They taste like sour pickles – which is the aim of the exercise, I guess. I just can’t quite forgive them for not looking like the ones in the picture!
Mustard and dill pickles
Makes one 500ml jar
Ingredients
250g small cucumbers
1/2 tablespoon yellow mustard seeds
a handful of fresh dill
3/4 tablespoon salt
250ml water
Method
To make the brine, dissolve the salt in water.
Place the cucumbers, mustard seeds and dill in a pickling jar. Try to pack the cucumbers in so they are standing upright as you want to ensure that they are covered by the brine.
Pout the brine into the jar and weigh down the cucumbers so they are fully covered by the brine.
Cover and store in a cupboard, opening every few days to release any air build up. The pickles are ready when the bubbles stop*, generally after 2 or 3 weeks.
Remove the weight and refrigerate. The pickles will keep for up to 4 months.
*because of the kahm yeast, I did not see bubbles in the brine.
