Bean pickles

You all know by now that I am an addicted pickler, not only eating pickles but also making pickles give me this wonderfull Zen feeling, the feeling to create a universe, where veggies and enzymes, bacteries and humans become ONE.

I had a craving today: since I live in the tropics I never made bean pickles, so I went to the supermarket and bought some organic string beans (in the US you probably call it long beans).

 Ok first the ingredients:

950 grams of string beans, but you can use french beans too of course.

Here we have to pay attention: most green beans always have to be cooked slightly ,

 to release phasin, which is a toxic substance. Boil 3 minutes is more than enough.

250 grams onion, sliced very fine.

10 grams garlic 

10 grams of fresh ginger

200 grams of grated carrot

15 grams of salt

1 teaspoon of mustard seed

1 teaspoon of dried dill seed

2 cloves

4 juniper berries.

a little bit juice of a previous batch of pickles

Ingredients are half the work, now we need to "marry" them .

First I crush the garlic and ginger in my mortar: we all know 2 component glues, 

where one component alone does not work, but 2 together gives the best sticking power. 
For garlic it works the same way: garlic needs to be crushed in order to mix all the components; if you only cut the garlic, you will have only 25 % of its power unleashed.
Once you get it to a fine paste, you add the other herbs, the mustard seeds, the dill seeds, the cloves and the juniper berries.And then you start to crush again .

Note: for long time pickles you dont need to crush the cloves and juniper berries, as time is on your side, but here we make pickles that should be edible in 2-3 weeks, so better crush them.

The carrot I grate in long strings: it makes a difference in texture, and as every Chef knows, structure of food,  together with taste and color (and for all of us health) is one of the important properties of food. You dont want it to grate it as fine as ginger, so I use a grating device , that Thai people use to make their papaya salad, and this gives for this pickle the right effect: if you dont have the device, just cut it in long strings.
So after you cook the beans slightly , you let them cool down and mix them with all the rest. Here I got a first experience, as the smell confirmed me, this will be a  hell-of-a-pickle!

All this was just enough to fill a small jar of the Perfect Pickler, and I am am very proud as now I know how many ingredients I need to fill a jar. In the beginning I always made too much, but now I reach a certain degree of knowledge, so it is always perfect .

One remark: if you dont have a "previous batch of pickles" double the amount of sea salt, as 2% of the vegetables weight is advised in most books. 

I always have 3 different kind of pickles at my place, after 3-4 days I put them in a glass recipient  with a plastic cover in the fridge and let it ripe for another month. I have red beet pickles that are over one year old, and they almost taste like wine: ummm yummieee.

How to make the right pickle for you and your family??

ok first follow an online recipe, if it works , you start to innovate, there is not limit on pickles. You are making saurkraut (cabbage pickles) and you have a bit left over of white wine?? just add it (not advised to give to children, of course).

For pickles dried herbs are better than fresh herbs, sorry I dont know why, I just speak from my own experience.

Happy pickling everyone.