WELCOME TO OUR KITCHEN: We're talking about pickles!
Pickles. Sounds easy, right? But pickles and pickling are more complicated than you might expect.
We're Bruce Weinstein & Mark Scarbrough, authors of three dozen cookbooks . . . plus a new one out this summer: COLD CANNING. Small-batch canning without a steam or pressure canner, everything designed to make a few jars for the fridge or freezer. If you'd like a copy, you can buy one with this link.
We've got lots of pickles in our new books, so we'd like to talk more about what a pickle is: what it was traditionally, what it now is, and the ways we've created to simplify the process of making pickles.
Here are the segments for this episode of COOKING WITH BRUCE & MARK:
[01:11] Our one-minute cooking tip: Don't confuse salt and soy sauce.
[03:21] All about pickles: traditional, room-temp, lacto-fermentation; short-cut, counter-to-fridge fermentation; and refrigerator pickling.
[26:17] What’s making us happy in food this week: Black lava salt bagels and black berry conserve!
Transcript
Hey, I am Bruce Weinstein and this is
Speaker:the Podcast Cooking with Bruce and Mark.
Speaker:And I'm Mark Scarborough.
Speaker:And together with Bruce, we have written 36 plus a forthcoming
Speaker:cookbook called Canning, which is out in the summer of 2025.
Speaker:This is our podcast about food and cooking.
Speaker:And if you're listening in real time, we've been off for a week
Speaker:because, uh, somebody in our team got.
Speaker:Food poisoning, which is Oh, what fun.
Speaker:We should make a whole episode about that.
Speaker:What happens when the cookbook authors get food poisoning?
Speaker:Uh,
Speaker:not recommended.
Speaker:One star.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Not recommended.
Speaker:One star.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Like my broken leg from earlier this year, not recommended one star.
Speaker:So, uh, we were off for a real a week in real time.
Speaker:Seriously?
Speaker:Because Bruce did get Kelo Backer.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:And that was a whole.
Speaker:Problems.
Speaker:So we missed a week, but now we're back.
Speaker:And as usual, we've got a one minute cooking dip.
Speaker:We wanna talk about pickles and what makes a pickle a pickle,
Speaker:and what are the different types of pickles that exist out there.
Speaker:We've got three different types, and they're all represented in our book called
Speaker:Canning, but more than just cold canning.
Speaker:These are the three different kinds of pickles out there.
Speaker:And then we'll tell you what's making us happy in food this week.
Speaker:So let's get started.
Speaker:Our one minute cooking tip, it is a common misconception that Chinese
Speaker:cooking uses soy sauce instead of salt.
Speaker:It doesn't.
Speaker:Chinese cooking calls for salt a lot of the time because salt
Speaker:is an enhancer while soy sauce.
Speaker:Is a flavor.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Now I thi this is a really key point.
Speaker:Salt isn't an enhancer, but soy sauce is a flavor.
Speaker:Um, I think that most of us like the flavor of soy sauce.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:But many people think it is just salty when of course we all know it's not.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:It has a very distinct umami, savory flavor to it.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:And different soy sauces have different flavors, different
Speaker:brands, different ages.
Speaker:They do.
Speaker:That's a whole different conversation.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:But, uh, it is true that soy sauce.
Speaker:Is very salty.
Speaker:It's, and people often use it on Chinese food as if it were salt.
Speaker:The people, I should say North Americans often use it as if it were salt.
Speaker:No,
Speaker:but it is not interchangeable and yes, it is okay to salt Chinese takeout if
Speaker:you think it needs salt, but please.
Speaker:Don't just drown it in soy sauce.
Speaker:Well, unless you really love soy sauce the way I do.
Speaker:So there you go.
Speaker:And we should
Speaker:talk about that sometime too.
Speaker:You love
Speaker:to drown rice
Speaker:in soy sauce.
Speaker:I do.
Speaker:You make soup, soy sauce
Speaker:rice soup.
Speaker:I do.
Speaker:And here's a really funny thing about me as the writer in our team.
Speaker:I like that.
Speaker:Cheapest ass soy sauce that you can make.
Speaker:Keep.
Speaker:Mark loves
Speaker:the
Speaker:kind
Speaker:that come in, those little tear packets they give you in Chinese takeout places.
Speaker:I do.
Speaker:It's my childhood.
Speaker:I listen, you could take the boy outta Dallas, but you can't take Dallas
Speaker:out of the boy, so there you go.
Speaker:Uh, I like, I'll
Speaker:stick to nice aged artisanal soy sauce.
Speaker:No.
Speaker:That's ridiculous.
Speaker:Um, hey, it was your parents from Dallas that bought me and introduced
Speaker:me to barrel age soy sauce.
Speaker:So there you
Speaker:go.
Speaker:Well, it may have been my parents threw my brief some suggestions of what to get you.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Before we get up to the next and large segment of the podcast about
Speaker:pickles, let's say that we have a Facebook group cooking at Bruce And
Speaker:Mark, you're welcome to join us there and tell us your stories about what.
Speaker:You like and don't like as well as the kind of pickles you like.
Speaker:We'll put this episode up there and you can respond with any kind of pickles that
Speaker:you like, and in fact, maybe introduce us to pickles that we don't know about.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:Please do.
Speaker:So let's then turn to pickles.
Speaker:Let's start with the question of what are pickles?
Speaker:What is a
Speaker:pickle?
Speaker:Okay, well that's a really complicated question because I think most
Speaker:people think it's a sour thing.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:That it has vinegar attached to it.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:But that is actually not the traditional definition of a pickle.
Speaker:No.
Speaker:True pickles, true original pickles are not.
Speaker:Sour from vinegar, right?
Speaker:They are fermented.
Speaker:That's so's, right?
Speaker:So they're sour fermented pickles and they get their
Speaker:sourness from lacto fermentation.
Speaker:Yeah, we can talk about that in a minute and what lacto fermentation is.
Speaker:But basically what happens here is that you use salt and water with the vegetable.
Speaker:You have to be very careful about the level of salt because you can
Speaker:kill off a certain bacteria, we'll talk about in a minute, that you
Speaker:need, once that bacteria gets.
Speaker:Working.
Speaker:It begins to slowly ferment the vegetable matter under hand.
Speaker:Cucumbers, cabbage.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:We use turnips, we use radishes, we use apples, we use all
Speaker:kinds of things for fermenting.
Speaker:You could pickle almost anything in terms of fermenting.
Speaker:Now, mark talked about bacteria.
Speaker:It's important to remember that not.
Speaker:All bacteria is bad bacteria.
Speaker:No, of course not.
Speaker:Not.
Speaker:It's not all the kind that I had last week.
Speaker:Capital bacteria.
Speaker:It's not all that.
Speaker:There's some really good beneficial bacteria out there.
Speaker:Some there's many thousands s billions.
Speaker:Billions of of kinds of your body.
Speaker:Body is full of good bacteria, which is why it's really healthy to.
Speaker:Eat lacto fermented foods like sauerkraut.
Speaker:Let me, lemme stop back.
Speaker:That's really helpful.
Speaker:Let me stop back and say, you said your body is full of que bacteria, which is
Speaker:probably true, but the most important place where those bacteria live in terms
Speaker:of your daily life is your gut biome.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:It is.
Speaker:And your gut biome is.
Speaker:Full of bacteria.
Speaker:Mostly it's your large intestine that Yes.
Speaker:That's where the bulk of your bacteria live.
Speaker:That's correct.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:And this really, uh, is necessary for your health.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:So as Bruce says, there is a way in which eating fermented foods may help your gut.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:Biome, the research on that is a little bit.
Speaker:Tricky.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:It's like taking probiotics.
Speaker:It's tricky.
Speaker:It's
Speaker:tricky
Speaker:that some people claim when they eat lacto fermented vegetables and they
Speaker:take probiotics, they feel much better.
Speaker:They're replenishing good bacteria.
Speaker:And you are,
Speaker:and let me say, I take a probiotic every single day.
Speaker:I do.
Speaker:And I do think it makes me feel better.
Speaker:You, while I know the research is a little sticky here and there's
Speaker:a. Probably about a 50 50 divide on the effectiveness of this.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:I can say at least, even if it's a placebo effect, taking a probiotic
Speaker:every day makes me feel better.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:So let's talk about that really good bacteria that ferments vegetables into
Speaker:pickles, and it is called lactobacillus.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:You hear it Lacto fermentation.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:Lactobacillus.
Speaker:And it's a really good bacteria and it's salt.
Speaker:Tolerant.
Speaker:And why is that important to a,
Speaker:to a degree?
Speaker:Yes, to a degree.
Speaker:That's really important because you're going to be submerging your vegetables
Speaker:and a salt brine, so you wanna make sure that the balance of that salt is
Speaker:correct so the lactobacillus can survive.
Speaker:That part of the fermentation and start to grow and create the good stuff you want,
Speaker:right?
Speaker:Which is gonna give you this kind of sour flavor.
Speaker:Now a lot of people think that the sourness, uh, when we talk about
Speaker:this may be like the whole gross, the canned sauerkraut of their childhood.
Speaker:That stuff is disgusting.
Speaker:There's no lacto should eat it.
Speaker:No one listen that it's pasteurized.
Speaker:They might.
Speaker:Have been, it tastes so awful.
Speaker:That is not anything like what sauerkraut actually should taste like.
Speaker:Sauerkraut.
Speaker:That is nothing like what sauerkraut should taste like.
Speaker:In fact, sauerkraut should be, uh, a beautifully mild sour, slightly
Speaker:funky, but mostly vegetable.
Speaker:Taste to the cabbage
Speaker:and what makes it sour is lactic acid.
Speaker:And here's how it works, right?
Speaker:Basically you're submerging these vegetables in this brine solution and in
Speaker:our book we give you the exact proportions and measurements of salt to water to do.
Speaker:Ooh, I
Speaker:wanna talk about
Speaker:that in a minute.
Speaker:Go.
Speaker:We will.
Speaker:So you have this salt water brine and you have to make sure
Speaker:it's salty enough to kill off.
Speaker:Harmful bacteria, but not too salty.
Speaker:So the lactobacillus, the good guys survive and what they do is
Speaker:they start to convert the lactose and other sugars present in the
Speaker:vegetables into lactic acid.
Speaker:And that lactic acid environment is sour and it preserves the vegetables,
Speaker:giving your pickles their distinctive.
Speaker:Tangy flavor.
Speaker:Okay,
Speaker:so here's what I wanna talk about, and that is salt.
Speaker:You would think that salty salt is salt is salt.
Speaker:That sodium chloride is sodium chloride is sodium chloride, and
Speaker:you would be correct at that.
Speaker:That salty, salty salt is salt.
Speaker:However, in writing cold, the canning, we came upon a rather astounding discovery,
Speaker:which neither of us really knew.
Speaker:I think we both knew to intuitively reach for.
Speaker:Kosher salt.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:When pickling and not table salt, but I don't think either
Speaker:of us actually knew why.
Speaker:And here's why.
Speaker:You don't wanna reach for table salt when you're trying to pull off this maneuver.
Speaker:It's not that anything will change in the growth of the lactobacillus,
Speaker:and it's not that necessarily table salt is bad for pickling.
Speaker:In fact, you'll probably get about the same result.
Speaker:Here's the problem.
Speaker:Most North American table salt is.
Speaker:Coated with an anti-icing agent that doesn't let it cake up in
Speaker:the box right and clump up over humidity when it rains it pours.
Speaker:When it rains it pours as the famous slogan goes, and that anti-icing
Speaker:agent over time will dissolve and it will cloud the brine.
Speaker:Now, why is that bad, or why is that not necessarily good?
Speaker:Because you wanna be able to see through the brine to see if
Speaker:anything is decaying in there.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:If you've got the right salt.
Speaker:Water ratio going because otherwise decay is, is gonna set in and in
Speaker:a cloudy brine, it's impossible to see it even in sauerkraut packed in
Speaker:a jar, which is a kind of pickle.
Speaker:So, um, basically what we're talking here is mm-hmm.
Speaker:Kosher.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:Salt, which is not made through a kosher process.
Speaker:It's not, oh my gosh.
Speaker:I actually ran into somebody who claimed that kosher salt on TikTok,
Speaker:they claim that kosher salt was made in mines overseen by rabbinical figures.
Speaker:It is not.
Speaker:It is the salt.
Speaker:Used in Kos ring meat.
Speaker:That is to draw the blood out of meat and it doesn't have any anti aking
Speaker:in slightly coarser grain usually than table salt, although you can
Speaker:find yeah, finely ground kosher salt.
Speaker:I want to add to what you just said about the cloudy brine.
Speaker:You know when pickles sit in your refrigerator for a long time, they start
Speaker:to get cloudy anyway, as the vegetable matter breaks down as they get a little
Speaker:too old, as they get past their prime.
Speaker:True.
Speaker:So sometimes that it's hard to know, is it still okay?
Speaker:Not only can I see it, but now I don't know why it's.
Speaker:Cloudy, is it because those pickles have gone bad?
Speaker:Because that will happen when pickles go bad.
Speaker:If
Speaker:you, if you use kosher salt without the anti kicking agent.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:And the brine in your jar of sauerkraut, pickles, pickle, relish, whatever it is
Speaker:that you're making, starts to turn cloudy.
Speaker:That is generally the sign to throw it out.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Better safe than sorry.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:That is absolutely my motto.
Speaker:It always has been, and after last week it is even more so that, and wash your
Speaker:hands every five seconds of your life.
Speaker:I just like, I'm gonna wash the skin off of my hands, I think at
Speaker:this point, so you don't have to.
Speaker:Go over for you.
Speaker:So ridiculous.
Speaker:We just came back from a big Costco run this morning and I
Speaker:spent an hour cutting up giant, giant slabs of meat and pork belly.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:I must have washed my hands for an hour after
Speaker:that.
Speaker:Well, I have to say that, um, we think, we don't know, but I, we think this is
Speaker:completely off the subject of pickles.
Speaker:We think that Bruce got, kaob me from boning out chicken thighs and not.
Speaker:Washing his hands properly.
Speaker:And those chicken thighs we did buy from Costco.
Speaker:Now we don't, we can't prove this.
Speaker:So we're not saying that you get kalo backer from Costco.
Speaker:God, no.
Speaker:No, we're not.
Speaker:No we're not.
Speaker:No, we're not.
Speaker:But I have to say that today I bought more bone in chicken thighs
Speaker:and I gingerly brought them to the cart and didn't let Bruce see me
Speaker:drop them in the cart for fear.
Speaker:He would say, put that back.
Speaker:So, but you also brought
Speaker:me packages of boneless thighs so that I wouldn't have to bone those out.
Speaker:But I brought the too, because I
Speaker:prefer them.
Speaker:Okay, let's go.
Speaker:I really don't wanna talk about Camp of Acters.
Speaker:So let's go back to pickles.
Speaker:So in cold canning our book, we have three different types of pickles
Speaker:and um, we just kinda wanna explain this because this is actually the
Speaker:overarching rubric of how there are three different kinds of pickles.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:So we've been talking.
Speaker:All this time really about one of the three types, and that is the
Speaker:full room temperature fermentation.
Speaker:And you can achieve this at home probably.
Speaker:You remember during the pandemic, millennials were crazed with
Speaker:making sauerkraut and fermenting things on their counters.
Speaker:We were all locked inside and there was nothing else to do except grow
Speaker:sourdough and ferment crap in jars.
Speaker:So there all this sauerkraut craze that happened.
Speaker:Um, you can still do that.
Speaker:And in fact in our book called County, we have a whole set of
Speaker:sauerkrauts that are small batch.
Speaker:They make one quart jar and um, they are indeed room temperature fermented.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:Bruce just made.
Speaker:Recipe from that book for
Speaker:PEs, right?
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:When I made my homemade gefilte fish, and Mark had this brilliant idea he said, why
Speaker:don't you make a jalapeno sauerkraut and we'll serve that with the gefilte fish?
Speaker:No.
Speaker:So I shredded my cabbage and I got the salt on it in the right
Speaker:proportions based on the book.
Speaker:I weighed it.
Speaker:You must.
Speaker:Weigh your salt and weigh your vegetables.
Speaker:There is no way out of this, I'm sorry, in room temperature
Speaker:ferment.
Speaker:You have to be so
Speaker:careful that I, I'm sorry.
Speaker:If you insist that you must only cook with measuring spoons and cups, you
Speaker:will not be successful with sauerkraut.
Speaker:You might even kill yourself.
Speaker:I'd be dead, please, if you're going to make it, weigh it.
Speaker:So you weigh it, you let it sit for a bit, you massage it, you get all that
Speaker:liquid coming outta the cabbage and you.
Speaker:Pack it into the quart jar and you smash it down.
Speaker:There is actually a sauerkraut pounder, which is a flat ended thing, and you
Speaker:push it down, you get rid of all the air bubbles, and then you buy these
Speaker:glass weights that you put on top.
Speaker:It pushes the cabbage down, makes sure that it is submerged.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:There's a very old saying amongst, uh, people who've done this for years.
Speaker:And that is, if it's in the brine, it's fine.
Speaker:If it's out, throw it out.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:So in other words though, the level of the liquid has to be
Speaker:higher than the vegetables.
Speaker:And then you cover it and you leave it at room temperature.
Speaker:Now here's the thing.
Speaker:Lactic acid is going to be produced, carbon dioxide is
Speaker:gonna be produced in this.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So pressure is gonna build in that jar.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So you.
Speaker:Either need to have a lid on that jar that is made for this where gases can escape.
Speaker:And I do use these little rubber sealers that have like a nipple
Speaker:on the top and it lets gas escape through that hole in the nipple.
Speaker:Or you're going to, I'm not gonna say a word, it's what it is.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Whatever.
Speaker:Or every day you're gonna have to open it, but you might get, it takes a, it
Speaker:takes a gay man to think gas comes out of a nipple, but Okay.
Speaker:Go.
Speaker:Please.
Speaker:Go on Do go on.
Speaker:Comes outta mine.
Speaker:Oh no it doesn't.
Speaker:And they come in all colors.
Speaker:I have them in yellow and blue and green.
Speaker:What, what?
Speaker:What are we still talking about you?
Speaker:My
Speaker:fermentation nipples.
Speaker:Oh, okay.
Speaker:And so the, you let them sit and you start checking it at about three days.
Speaker:'cause that's often when it's really starts to get going.
Speaker:I come in all colors.
Speaker:I'm not off that.
Speaker:I thought we were gonna like get into your whole sexual history suddenly.
Speaker:Okay, go on.
Speaker:Lots of
Speaker:colors there.
Speaker:Do go on and.
Speaker:Then when it is sour enough for your taste, you switch it into the refrigerator
Speaker:where it could stay for weeks.
Speaker:It'll still continue to ferment a little bit.
Speaker:That is full room temperature fermentation.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:It's kind of like they used to do when I was growing up and we would go
Speaker:to the Lower East side right out of a scene from like Crossing Delaney,
Speaker:your mother's favorite movie ever.
Speaker:It was my mother's favorite movie.
Speaker:And we would go to Ratner's, the kosher dairy restaurant for Sunday
Speaker:brunch, and then we would go over to the Pickle Guys and they had
Speaker:all the pickles and the barrels.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:And that's fermentation.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:And my grandmother made pickles in this lactose fermentation way.
Speaker:We didn't use such fancy words.
Speaker:Did she made, did she call 'em kosher pickles?
Speaker:No, she did not.
Speaker:But we didn't use such fancy words.
Speaker:But she also fermented those.
Speaker:She fermented other vegetables to we just all it room temperature?
Speaker:Yeah, we just called it pickling.
Speaker:And she didn't have your fancy nipple thing?
Speaker:She had.
Speaker:Oh, her nipples didn't give off gas.
Speaker:Uh, well, she had a weight mm-hmm.
Speaker:That she would put on top of it.
Speaker:And I have to say that that weight was, as I recall, made outta
Speaker:some kind of stone, and then she was constantly undoing the jars.
Speaker:The thing with that is you're gonna have a lot of splatter, right?
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:Because the pressure builds and every day you're gonna have Yep.
Speaker:You'll open it and you'll have a lot of liquid coming spurting out.
Speaker:Okay, so
Speaker:that's, so that's.
Speaker:All about room temperature fermentation.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:There's actually a second way, and this is what we use a lot in our book called
Speaker:Canning This Out the Summer, but, but it is something that you can use yourself
Speaker:and that is called a partial room temp.
Speaker:And what this involves is basically not being quite so.
Speaker:Crazy about the weight of the salt and the amount of the water.
Speaker:But you're gonna create a saltwater brine that you don't have to be exact with, and
Speaker:then you're gonna submerge, let's say.
Speaker:Uh, pickling cucumbers in it, and you're gonna leave it on
Speaker:the counter for 12 to 24 hours.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:As long as those cucumbers remain underneath the liquid.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:They must be submerged.
Speaker:And what this does is it gives the lactobacillus just a little headstart.
Speaker:It needs a little kickstart.
Speaker:Once it blooms even a little, it will keep blooming in the fridge for a while.
Speaker:But you, this is a way you can kind of.
Speaker:Um, make that process more safe.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:You should get it in the fridge within 12 to 24 hours.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And it, I love that headstart because it's not long enough at room
Speaker:temperature for anything bad to happen.
Speaker:No.
Speaker:But it's just long enough for something good to start happening.
Speaker:And then the third way we do it is complete.
Speaker:Refrigerator fermentation.
Speaker:And we do that with our Kim cheese.
Speaker:And why do we do that?
Speaker:Because we're not just adding salt brine, we're adding a lot of other ingredients.
Speaker:We're adding sugars, we're adding fish sauce, we're adding some funkier
Speaker:stuff into the mix, and we just, were not comfortable letting these
Speaker:products sit at room temperature.
Speaker:And if you leave the kimchi in the refrigerator long enough,
Speaker:it will begin to ferment.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:It just takes longer.
Speaker:I just have to say, I have to stop and say.
Speaker:Every Korean who would ever listen to this podcast is about to freak
Speaker:out because you're talking about refrigerator fermentation for kimchi and
Speaker:no one in Korea would do such a thing.
Speaker:No, never.
Speaker:Nope.
Speaker:Ever.
Speaker:Nope.
Speaker:So this is a technique that we develop to kind of help people make.
Speaker:A jar of kimchi without the fear mm-hmm.
Speaker:Of killing yourself.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:And then we get sued.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Well, and all that happens, and especially the traditional kimchi where
Speaker:you make a rice porridge and you pull it, pour it over the cabbage with the
Speaker:hot peppers and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker:I love
Speaker:that kimchi.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:That stuff is dangerous in many ways for people who are not home
Speaker:and not watching it, you know?
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:I mean, you.
Speaker:You're not a Korean grandmother home watching your pot all day.
Speaker:So this is a way that you can put it in the fridge and not worry about it.
Speaker:And we have a whole set of refrigerator fermented, not only Kim cheese,
Speaker:but pickles, pickle relishes.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:We let a lot of things sit in the fridgerator and it does take long,
Speaker:it takes, it does 10 to 14 days for it to start really working.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:Let me also say that the book is not limited.
Speaker:To classically fermented pickles.
Speaker:We have tons of vinegar, pickles, sweet and sour pickles, you
Speaker:know, refrigerator, right?
Speaker:Uh, bread and butter pickles.
Speaker:And we have all sorts of beets that are pickled with sugar and vinegar.
Speaker:So, but
Speaker:again, that's that weird way that the word pickle has shifted.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:Because sweet and sour pickles are generally not
Speaker:considered pickles under the.
Speaker:Old school definition of a fermented vegetable, right?
Speaker:That's just cucumbers soaked in a vinegary sugar brine sauce
Speaker:stuff with lots of aromatics.
Speaker:But it is now in the modern world called a pickle.
Speaker:And it's called a pickle, right?
Speaker:And we also have pickle lilies from both England and from the US South.
Speaker:Yeah, those
Speaker:are like relishes almost.
Speaker:Those are, yeah.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Those
Speaker:verge more, way more over onto relishes than we have a lot of
Speaker:Chow Chows and Branston Pickle Yum.
Speaker:And Branston Pickle.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:. If you don't know what a c cha chow is, you're not from the American South.
Speaker:It's a cabbage relish.
Speaker:Uh, allegedly it came out of Chinese cuisine, but that's so not even true.
Speaker:It doesn't come anywhere near Chinese cuisine.
Speaker:It's really a southern condiment.
Speaker:Chow chow.
Speaker:It's one, it's something actually that my grandmother used to make, and I love
Speaker:Chow Chow more than I can possibly say.
Speaker:And you can get sweet cabbage chow and you can get super fiery hot.
Speaker:Chacha, let you guess which one I prefer.
Speaker:Same
Speaker:thing like kimchi.
Speaker:You can get really hot fiery kimchi and you can get less fiery kimchi.
Speaker:In fact, when we were at Costco this morning, we did not buy the kimchi there
Speaker:because, no, there is a woman, mark follows on TikTok, who she's always.
Speaker:Feeding her Korean parents.
Speaker:All this food from Costco.
Speaker:Great.
Speaker:And I believe like they do that maybe the kimchi, Costco's
Speaker:good for non-Korean people.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:What they say
Speaker:is good for Americans,
Speaker:good for good for Americans, but uh, yeah, I kind of agree too.
Speaker:So I'll stick to my own.
Speaker:It's spicier.
Speaker:It's better.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I like the spicy stuff, but I also like, there's a, there are these
Speaker:summary kimchi that aren't really.
Speaker:All that fermented at all.
Speaker:And they're
Speaker:not even hot.
Speaker:They're white and they're made with sugar and vinegar and they're almost my
Speaker:opinion, those delicious summer white Kim cheese are sort of like the bread
Speaker:and butter pickles of chorea, sort of.
Speaker:Um, I hate to make comparisons among food cultures like that, but yes.
Speaker:Sort of, so this is the whole problem of pickling mm-hmm.
Speaker:Is it has become, it's a pickle moved from, yeah, it moved from a
Speaker:lacto fermentation problem out into this larger rubric where things
Speaker:like bread and butter, pickles, and.
Speaker:Okra pickles and you know, dilly beans are now considered pickles.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:Although they're not, those are just green beans soaked in a vinegar
Speaker:mixture with lots of aromatics.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:So, but they're good.
Speaker:It's, it's, we call those pickles, but in the old school pickling technique mm-hmm.
Speaker:There are three ways to achieve this at full room temperature, at a partial
Speaker:room temperature, or just in the refrigerator, which takes much longer.
Speaker:, And I wanna end with one little factoid.
Speaker:Uh, when I was researching putting this, uh, this episode together, did you know
Speaker:that last year in the Seoul, Korea airport at Inchon Airport, ICN is its code, the,
Speaker:customs officials there confiscated almost 11 tons of kimchi, no wait from carry
Speaker:on Luggage.
Speaker:I read this in your notes for this episode and, um, uh,
Speaker:okay, so I have many questions.
Speaker:Oh, confiscated coming in or going out?
Speaker:Does it matter?
Speaker:Yes, actually, yes.
Speaker:I want to know.
Speaker:Who's confiscating?
Speaker:What are, is this people com coming into Korea?
Speaker:Or why would they bringing kimchi?
Speaker:It's really Kohls to Newcastle.
Speaker:Why are they bringing kimchi
Speaker:to Korea?
Speaker:I bet it was going out.
Speaker:I bet most of it was going out because Do you
Speaker:think that people put kimchi in their luggage to take to their
Speaker:loved ones around the world
Speaker:and to take with themselves?
Speaker:'cause they're not gonna trust anyone else's kimchi
Speaker:if they're going on vacation.
Speaker:No.
Speaker:No.
Speaker:I wouldn't either.
Speaker:Um, so I'm gonna
Speaker:say going out.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Oh my gosh.
Speaker:One more thing about kimchi and then we'll finish, I promise.
Speaker:If you live near an H Mart Oh.
Speaker:Which is the giant Korean grocery store change.
Speaker:Oh gosh.
Speaker:Which is is such a fabulous supermarket then we we're so jealous of you.
Speaker:Yeah, we are.
Speaker:But you should go to H Mart and get the radish kimchi, which is the daon
Speaker:that's been cubed up and kimchi.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:Turn into a kimchi like product that the radish kimchi is to die for from H Mart.
Speaker:So
Speaker:is the chicken Moo.
Speaker:Which is the daon radish cut in the cubes and then it is just
Speaker:in a sweet vinegar solution.
Speaker:Mm. And it's called Chicken Moo 'cause moo is the Korean.
Speaker:word for daon radish . And it is what is served with fried chicken.
Speaker:Yeah, there you go.
Speaker:The radish kimchi and the chicken moo.
Speaker:Just go to H Mart, mo up down the aisles and make us jealous.
Speaker:And you can do that because we don't live anywhere near.
Speaker:An H bar.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:That's our whole segment on pickles.
Speaker:We're gonna quit talking about it for now and uh, we're gonna
Speaker:pass on to the last segment.
Speaker:Let me say before we get there then it would be great if you could like this
Speaker:podcast and if you could subscribe to it and if you can write a rating even,
Speaker:uh, or if you even like good podcasts.
Speaker:Thanks so much.
Speaker:'cause we are unsupported and choose to remain that way.
Speaker:And it's one of the ways, in fact, it is the single way.
Speaker:You can help support this podcast.
Speaker:Thanks for that.
Speaker:Okay, our last segment as is traditional.
Speaker:What's making us happy in food this week.
Speaker:Something we got this morning, black lava salt sourdough bagels.
Speaker:Oh my gosh.
Speaker:From the Blue House bagel shop in Canton, Connecticut.
Speaker:We've already talked about them too many times.
Speaker:We've talked, I talked about them.
Speaker:I've interviewed Leah, the owner, and we picked up three dozen bagels this morning.
Speaker:'cause we're going to someone's house for dinner tonight and
Speaker:we didn't know what to bring.
Speaker:So we decided let's go get them bagels and cream cheese and I'll,
Speaker:maybe I'll throw a jar of my homemade marmalade in the bag too.
Speaker:And that's a lovely house gift, but we.
Speaker:We got a dozen salt bagels, which they use black lava salt, and we shared
Speaker:one in the car, hot outta the bag.
Speaker:Yum.
Speaker:On our way to Costco, on our way to Costco, but we didn't buy the kimchi.
Speaker:It all wraps up together.
Speaker:Okay, I guess what's bahe me happy food this week is actually a recipe from cold
Speaker:canning that Bruce made several weeks ago, and it is the blackberry conserves.
Speaker:And if you don't know a conserve from a preserve, we talked about
Speaker:it in a previous episode, but a conserve has a lot of aromatics in it.
Speaker:It's a fruit.
Speaker:Generally a fruit jam.
Speaker:I guess tomatoes are fruit, so it is a fruit jam in some way, but
Speaker:at the same time, it has tons of aromatics and often nuts in the mix.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:So Bruce's Blackberry conserves has ginger, it has walnuts in it.
Speaker:I What other spices are in there?
Speaker:Well, it's
Speaker:candy ginger, which is so great.
Speaker:And there's cloves and there's little cinnamon, and it's the,
Speaker:mm. Little less sugar than you would have in Blackberry Jam.
Speaker:And it's, it's really good.
Speaker:Let's
Speaker:just say it's not good on peanut butter, but it is really, really good on your
Speaker:preserved meats, like your prosciutto.
Speaker:Oh, it's great.
Speaker:On a prosciutto sandwich.
Speaker:On a sourdough bagel.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:Yes, exactly.
Speaker:So
Speaker:it's those blackberry conserves that I think are so unbelievably amazing.
Speaker:So that's it.
Speaker:For us this week, lemme remind you that there is an Instagram channel cooking
Speaker:with Bruce and Mark, as well as a TikTok channel cooking with Bruce and Mark,
Speaker:and you can actually see us making various recipes, including a blueberry
Speaker:jam segment that's coming up mm-hmm.
Speaker:On TikTok and Instagram reels.
Speaker:If you subscribe to cooking with Bruce and Mark,
Speaker:there's also a Facebook group Cooking with Bruce and Mark.
Speaker:And please go there, go to Facebook, go to cooking with Bruce and Mark, and you
Speaker:can share with us there what's making you happy in food this week as we tell you.
Speaker:What's making us happy in food every week here in cooking with Bruce and Mark.
Speaker:And we want to know what is making you happy in food this week.
Speaker:So share it with us and we'll see you in the next episode of
Speaker:cooking with Bruce and Mark.
