Traditional fermentation practices, essential for self-sufficiency, embody a form of everyday resistance and quiet sustainability, countering the homogenization and commodification of food.
Traditional fermentation practices, essential for self-sufficiency, embody a form of everyday resistance and quiet sustainability, countering the homogenization and commodification of food.
Not really, I mostly went by trial and error and very old memories of doing it as a kid with my grandmother.
But I learned that if you don’t peel the vegetables it can make sense to shortly immerse them in boiling water before transferring them to the vinegar broth. Just the hot vinegar water itself seems to be insufficient to kill some of the fungi clinging to the outer peel and those seem to be not as sensitive to the low pH as other microorganisms.
I’ve done some pickeling and for small cucumbers it works if you put them in a salt water bath for about a day. Makes the pickles more snappy and I’ve never had fungal issues.
Ah, that might work as well. With the larger cucumbers I have been using only the very outer layer gets hot enough so they stay snappy inside, but I agree that this could be an issue with smaller ones.