Ingredients for pickling: peppers tomatoes, collards, cherry leaves, dill seed, rosemary. After trimming I’ll weigh it to see how much salt to use, then pack it into the jar.
Cherry leaves add a little bit of tannins that keep things crispy.
The loaded pickling jar. It has a “well” around the lid to keep the carbon dioxide in as it ferments. Once it gets to a certain point it starts “blooping”. I just have to keep some water in the moat to maintain the air lock.
It just blooped! It's alive already!
It's kinda like having a pet... I don't have to feed it but I do need to be sure it has water (in the moat) and keep it out of direct sunlight.
At this time of year it might only need a week on the counter before I put it in jars to refrigerate. In the middle of winter it might be two weeks. Whenever the blooping rate goes up and then comes down again, that's time.
This lacto-fermentation process is common for sauerkraut, but it can be used with almost any vegetables. I just read that in some cultures (excuse the pun) they'll add lemons or lemon juice when starting a batch. There's a lot of variety.
@FireMonkey No dairy is involved (I'm vegan.) The fermenting bacteria is a beneficial type, lactobacillus. In the process of fermentation it creates lactic acid.
This article is pretty good in explaining it: https://www.thespruceeats.com/how-lacto-fermentation-works-1327598