Bread and Butter Pickle Recipe

We’ve been refining our bread and butter pickle recipe, and thought we’d share it with you. It’s simple enough for small hands, satisyfing for big hands, and even comes with a foraging mission (oak leaves, if you choose to accept it).

Fermented Cucumber Recipe

Tools

Kilner Jar

Fermentation weights or zip lock plastic bag

Ingredients

1kg cucumber (ideally mini ones)

300ml water (preferably filtered)

150g golden caster sugar

10 g dill

2 oak leaves

50g sliced shallots or pearl onions if you have them (slice them or if they are small leave them whole)

2 peeled garlic cloves

1 tbsp mustard seeds

1 tbsp coriander seeds

15g seasalt

Method

Trim the cucumbers and cut into chunks or spears. Place them in a bowl and add the salt, leave to stand for an hour or so at room temperature. This helps draw out the moisture of the cucumbers to maintain a good crunch. 

Wash the salted cucumbers.

In a bowl, prepare the brine - combine water, salt, sugar, dill, shallots, garlic cloves, mustard and coriander seeds. Stir until the salt is dissolved. 

Add the cucumbers to the brine.

Add the oak leaves at the bottom of the Kilner jar, the leaves help maintain the crispiness of the pickles.

Pack the cucumbers into the jar, ladle the brine over the cucumbers ensuring they are fully covered. Leave about 1.5 cm of space from the top of the jar.

Place something weighty on top of the cucumbers (if you have fermentation weights -  use them, if not an air tight zip lock plastic bag filled with the brine or water will do). Make sure that the surface of the liquid is above the cucumbers to prevent air pockets from forming. The lactic acid bacteria, responsible for natural fermentation, work best in an anaerobic (oxygen-free) environment.

Keep your jar at room temperature for 2-3 weeks, you can start trying the pickles after a week. Warmth speeds up fermentation, cold temperatures slows it down. 

Once your pickles are ready, store them in the fridge - they should last for months. Happy snacking!