Easiest Pickled Fermented Vegetables Ever
Create delicious, nutritious, and gut-loving fermented vegetables at home with this easy, step-by-step guide to pickling vegetables with salt in just minutes.
Servings: 1 quart jar
Calories: 15kcal
Equipment
- 1 quart jar with lid for fridge storage
- 1 quart measuring cup
- 1 glass weight, optional
- 1 Fermenting Lid, optional
Ingredients
- 3 to 4 cups cut vegetables or enough to fill a quart jar (cauliflower, carrots, green beans, etc.) - a variety or all one kind
- 3 garlic cloves, peeled and slightly crushed
- 1/2 to 1 teaspoon of red pepper flakes optional OR coarse ground black pepper
- 1-2 teaspoons pickling spice, customized to your vegetables like this recipe
- Other optional seasonings: dill, oregano, thyme, etc.
- 1½ - 2 tablespoons sea salt*
- 1 quart water, filtered if on a public water system, or if well water isn't good
Instructions
- Place garlic in the bottom of a clean, wide-mouth quart jar. Layer the cut vegetables, pressing down to fit as many as you can up to the shoulder of the jar (1-2 inches headspace).
- Add any seasonings to the contents in the jar.
- Dissolve the salt in the water in a 1-quart measuring cup and pour over the vegetables in the jar until the top vegetables are barely covered.** Use a thin plastic spatula around the sides of the jar to release any air bubbles.
- Use a weight to keep the vegetables under the brine and attach a tight regular lid or airlock lid like the easy fermenter.
- Ferment at room temperature (60-75 degrees is ideal) for about 5 days, tasting to see if they are your desired flavor and texture at day 4. If using regular lids, burp daily to release excess pressure.
- Once they are finished, remove the fermenting lid, if you used one, and add a regular lid. Move the jar to the refrigerator for storage - the flavor will continue to develop.
Notes
*If you're worried about salt intake, you can use the lower amount of salt and it will still be enough to keep the bad bacteria at bay to let the good bacteria grow. I prefer the pickles with the full 2 tablespoons of salt.
**You will not use all the water-salt brine, but this amount produces the standard salt-water ratio we need and covers the needs of different vegetables (some will leave more air pockets -cauliflower leaves vs. carrots, etc.). You can save the extra for other ferments if you'd like.
Storage: We have kept these in the refrigerator for almost two months. Towards the end, the water is a lot more cloudy, but most of the vegetables are still crisp though not quite as good as at the beginning (green beans don't hold up as well, so we eat those first).
Nutrition
Serving: 1/2 cup | Calories: 15kcal | Carbohydrates: 3.4g | Protein: 0.7g | Fat: 0.1g | Sodium: 142mg | Fiber: 1.2g | Sugar: 1.2g
