Vegivore Eats | (Possibly Failed) Half-Sour Kosher Dill Pickles

I think I failed at making pickles.  Anyone who knows me knows that failing at food is not okay with me.  This perfectionist might end up eventually posting a Part Two (or, oh god, it could even go to a Part Three...or Four, damn) of this entry just to have documented that I Figured Out Pickles.

The thing is, I'm just not sure whether I made myself a batch of homemade pickles or whether I made myself a batch of homemade botulism.  How can one really trust the pickles they've made?  I think I need a pH kit. Also maybe a doctor, since I ate some.

Armed with pickling cucumbers from Kimball's Fruit Farm and fresh garlic from Hutchins Farm (and a recipe from CHOW that landed in my email inbox at the perfect time), I went forth into the land of food preservation. 
[["Look at me!  I'm gonna be like my gypsy ancestors, pickling my food all self-sufficient-like!" -- me on Monday]]

I'll admit, the reviews on this recipe are...doubting, for lack of better word.  Someone used the term "barbaric" in regard to the preparation technique. That said, I admittedly read the reviews after making up the salt brine and beginning the fermentation waiting game.  So at that point, all I could do was sit back and see what was what after the recommended 4 days.  I was hopeful that the anaerobic bacteria would come through for me.  Science!!

I followed the recipe near-exactly; using apple cider vinegar instead of white was my only change. The two vinegars have the same acidity level, though, so they are interchangeable and this substitute shouldn't have affected the finished product.

There are typically two families of pickles, those that are fermented in a salt brine and those that are fermented in a vinegar solution.  What I found interesting about this recipe is that it calls for both vinegar and salt -- I assume that no baddies survived the four days at room temp living in those conditions, but am also not ready to throw caution to the wind and eat more than a itty bite of one of these things.

What one is going for with a half-sour Kosher dill is like the pickle you'd find at a Jewish deli.  Piquant, crunchy, garlicky and of course, dill-y.  Here is what I ended up with today (Thursday):

My first attempt at Kosher dill pickles were floppy, salty ick sponges with here-and-there brown spots.  You can perhaps see where I took a small nibble of the top half...enough to taste but enough that I wouldn't vomit and/or die.  Where did I go wrong?  Did I go wrong?  Can this be right? At four days these are considered the half-sours I was going for.  Do...do I just leave them in the brine and see what happens?  Do I go Full Sour? 
..I decided to scrap the project and try again another time. Generally speaking, I'm not sure how I did, whether it was me or the recipe, but the pickles turned out suspect. Can something really be okay sitting in a pool of microorganisms for days on my countertop? Any way I look at it, this is a project to try to tackle again another time -- I do have limited counter space, after all.

...

PRO TIP: when one fails at pickles, drink picklebacks.  Using brine from a store-bought jar, of course. Drinking this brine is not recommended.

FUN FACT: The garlic is really what makes a Kosher pickle Kosher...this was news to me.  Who knew it had nothing to do with Jewish prep technique? 

FUN FACT: This recipe uses vinegar, a nominal amount really, but I'd always thought that the natural fermentation process is what would make the sourness.
I've since learned that traditionally-made pickles use the naturally-occurring Lactobacillus bacteria that hangs out on the skin of the growing cucumber. This makes a true pickle one that doesn't require vinegar to preserve, but also makes it so that one can't make a traditional pickle from a well-cleaned, harvested market pickle.