January Lock-Down Pickling

Both of these monstrosities used a 2% brine. That’s about 4 heaped table spoons of Salt to 1 litre of water. The slight pink haze is from the Ferrous Salts as I used ground Himalayan Salt. It’s not got magical properties (!!!) as some folk think, it’s just not got anti-caking ingredients which sometimes interfere with fermentation.

The Pickled Ginger was a bit of a challenge as it has natural anti-microbial properties and after a false start I had to ‘Seed’ it with a little liquid from an existing Garlic ferment. But it’s been worth the wait. If anything pickling have intensified the flavour and softened the texture. I started this on on the 29th of November, so it has been quite slow.

The Pickled Round Shallots I only started on Wednesday, so they’ve had 3 days so far. They are very active and bubbling away happily. There’s quite a lot of natural sugars in Alliums, so this will initially be a very fast ferment and eventually settle down as the Ph increases. I’m thinking perhaps 3 weeks until it goes dormant but we’ll see. The Shallots were on offer so this 1l jar will have cost us about 35p including the Salt!