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Cucumber Pickles, the Right Way

Pickles without vinegar have a short shelf life, but they are The Best

Mark Bittman
Heated
Published in
4 min readAug 4, 2020

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Overhead shot of a rustic square wooden basket filled with cucumbers and a bunch of fresh dill tied with a piece of twine.
Photo: istetiana/Getty Images

We take cucumbers for granted; they’re year-round staples with little character that you chop up and put into salads, make Sichuan-style, throw into smoothies. Some people still eat cucumber sandwiches; I know because I’m among them.

That’s all fine. But you’re not going to delight in a store-bought hothouse cucumber in January.

This is the time for daily cucumber eating, and for real enjoyment, whether they’re sprinkled with salt, grated into sour cream or yogurt, made into soup.

Still: When cucumbers are “in” desperate measures are required; that’s what seasonal eating is about. (Soon, we will be needing desperate measures around tomatoes.) Even if you’re not a gardener or a CSA member, cukes are everywhere.

This year, for the first in many, I thought about making what I consider to be “real” pickles, the kind you put up in jars and eat in January and think of summer, the kind that in my mind a real pantry is full of, and it took me a full day to reject that notion. Not only is canning a hassle of the first order, but I don’t even like those kinds of pickles. I don’t like pickling spice especially, but really what I can’t stand is food soaked in vinegar. (I am not sure anyone really does, and that’s why “real” pickles have sugar, too.) Preserving is a thing, obviously, it serves a purpose, but if it’s not necessary and you don’t like the taste, what’s the point?

Not only is canning a hassle of the first order, but I don’t like those kinds of pickles.

What I like are vinegar-free, salty-garlicky half-sours, which is not surprising since that’s what I grew up with. Other people like them too: Some friends were over the other night (this happens, with appropriate distancing), and they were like, “These are amazing. How do you do this?”

Put aside for a moment that people like anything you cook for them — what’s true is that it’s not easy to get pickles like these because they’re best when homemade and they don’t keep forever, so industrial food processing can’t deal with them. They’re pickle-barrel pickles and, as it…

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Heated
Heated

Published in Heated

Food from every angle: A publication from Medium x Mark Bittman

Mark Bittman
Mark Bittman

Written by Mark Bittman

Has published 30 books, including How to Cook Everything and VB6: The Case for Part-Time Veganism. Newsletter at markbittman.com.

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