Vacuum-Sealed Pickles, Quick Fermentation, and Ultrasonic Baths: Cucumbers, Chanterelles, Maple Syrup Pears, Fennel and Chili Peppers

I went on a bit of a pickle roll when I was at the Modernist Cuisine Cooking Lab…

“Can you quick-ferment cucumbers?” I asked. I’d heard they made their own sauerkraut and I wanted to know if there was a way to do it in one day instead of two weeks. Turns out you can’t actually ferment them in a day, but you can trick your taste buds into thinking they’re fermented by adding lactic acid at 0.2% scaling So if you use 100g of cucumbers to make fermented dill pickles, you use 0.2 g of lactic acid and 1.5 g of salt. Then you follow the traditional fermenting instructions or stick them right into the fridge. Your pickles won’t be pickles yet, but they may taste like it.

There’s also a standard sour vinegar pickle recipe and a standard sweet vinegar pickle recipe, and I thought it might infuse the vegetables more quickly if I vacuum-sealed them sous vide. So instead of boiling in a water bath in a glass jar for classic canning, or just letting the brined vegetables soak in the fridge in a glass jar for a week, I boiled the brine (I don’t even think it’s necessary, though, because the vacuum sealing heats the brining liquid) and added the brine to the chopped vegetables in the food-grade plastic bag to be vacuum sealed.

Now, the vacuum sealer at the Modernist Cuisine lab is much better than the one I tested at my home. It can seal liquids very easily. Nell, as the lab chefs call her, allows you set the vacuum pressure and the seal, and you can raise the food or lower it so the liquid in the bags doesn’t spill by removing or adding heavy plates. It’s a massive machine, and it’s old, but it works well. You just need to watch that when the vacuum is being created that the liquid doesn’t boil up over the lip of the bag. That’s a messy mistake that I miraculously didn’t make.

So I made these things sous vide:

Classic Dills – 400mL vinegar, 160mL water, 16g salt and 4g calcium lactate (to keep them firm. Some people use grape leaves, and others just use very, very fresh cucumbers, but without this chemical your cucumbers will eventually get soft if you leave them for 6 months. It’s what most grocery store pickles have in them to keep them crunchy. Now, some people swear it’s a horrible thing that leaches calcium from your bones, and Chef Aaron of the Cooking Lab said there’s an aftertaste. This was an experiment for me, though, so I tried the pickles with the calcium lactate and one of the pickled chanterelle recipes.

Boil the brine, add to chopped cucumbers (or whole, but it will take more time to infuse) in food-grade plastic bag, and vacuum seal. Now, if your vacuum saler doesn’t boil the liquid, this won’t work as well, and you’ll need to wait longer for your pickles to infuse with the liquid. But, I think because there’s no oxygen in the bag they will infuse slightly faster than regular pickles in regular glass jars. I think. Anyone think differently?? Thoughts?

Pickled Chanterelles with Dried Apricots – Chef Bilet though the apricots would go well with the chanterelles, so when apricots and chanterelles appeared on my work station on Thursday afternoon, what was I to do but pickle them? For the sweet brine:

400mL vinegar (100%)
280mL water (70%)
160mL sugar (40%)
20g salt (0.05%)
4g calcium lactate, optional (1%) or 1.6g pectin methylesterase enzyme, NovoShape brand. Apparently it does the same thing as the calcium lactate. Sounds scarier, but who knows?

Same steps – boil the brine, pour over dried apricots and cleaned chanterelles in food-grade plastic bag (peel the stems with a paring knife to get rid of the tough woody sections. Thanks to Chef Sam for help with this!! He had his hands full of geoduck but still helped me out. He washed his hands first. Add dried apricots. Vacuum seal.

I think you could gently cook these sous vide, which would safe nutrients but infuse more like regular canning. Next time I have a sous vide machine and vacuum sealer to experiment with, that’s what I’ll be doing. Instead, I stuck them in the ultrasonic bath at Chef Sam’s suggestion.

“What will that do?” I asked.

“No idea. Lets find out,” said Sam. So we did. It did nothing good. Aaron said the mushroom tasted slightly off, and the second batch I did with tarragon instead of dried apricots that I did not put in the ultrasonic bath worked out much better.I also used a white wine vinegar and a ver jus vinegar, which softened the bite of the acid.

So I’m a little obsessed with hot peppers. So when I couldn’t resist buying a bunch at the University District Farmer’s Market, I had to pickle them. I did a sweet pickle with the reds, and a sour pickle with the greens.

Same scaling as above, but with rice wine vinegar. The greens I also ultrasonic bath-ed. They were bitter and a bit gross, but I think would be good (not ultrasonic bath-ed) with Indian dal. The sweet ones would be addictive with Thai and Vietnamese noodle soups and rice bowls…mmm…bun (vermicelli rice noodles). I threw some star anise and szechuan peppercorns in with the reds and kept it simple with black peppercorns and whole coriander for the greens.

And, of course, I love fennel, so I pickled that with fennel seeds and celery seeds in a sweet vinegar brine. Verdict: So-so.

The pièce de résistance, however, were the brandied Japanese pears. I’ll tell the story in the next post, and make it non-sous-vide friendly, but for now, here’s what I did for those looking to try this sous vide:

6 Japanese pears (not “Asian pears.” I also tried with peaches, but the pears stay firmer. You could also use Bartlett pears, but the whole reason I made these was because the guy at the market said they tasted like bourbon and butterscotch. They did not, so I added bourbon and maple syrup)
400mL champagne, white wine, or pear vinegar (100%) – The lab has quite an extensive collection of exotic vinegars…I had fun
280mL water (70%)
160mL maple syrup (40%) – The lab had a maple syrup with bourbon. Seemed appropriate.
30mL bourbon (7.5%)
20g salt (0.05%)
A few sprigs lemon verbena (optional)

Boil brine, pour over sliced pears and lemon verbena, seal sous vide. Wait a day or more. Amazing. They stayed crunchy and the peaches didn’t dis-colour as they would with canning.