Pickled cucumbers are an original Russian appetizer, without which not a single feast can do. And they perfectly complement everyday food with their piquant taste and spicy aroma. They are used as a side dish and as an indispensable ingredient for many favorite dishes. Is it possible to imagine our winter menu without vinaigrettes, pickles or New Year's salad Olivier? Each housewife has her own recipes and secrets on how to close pickles for the winter so that they are crispy, strong and tasty.

Zelentsy (immature fruits of "milk" ripeness used for food) are best suited for salting in the so-called "Russian shirt" - with a fairly dense peel, covered with rare large tubercles with black or white spikes. These include such well-known varieties as "Salting", "Nezhinsky", "Phoenix", etc. High quality during salting and pickling is also demonstrated by the owners of the Dutch or German "shirts" - with smaller and more often located tubercles-pimples, densely pubescent along the entire surface. Due to the large number of spikes that break off when picking and washing cucumbers, many micro-holes appear in the peel - tubules. Through them, the brine penetrates faster, and the cucumbers are salted more evenly.

When harvesting densely pubescent greens, you can not cut them at the base and take a smaller amount of spices and spices.

Now there are many varieties and hybrids of cucumbers, bred specifically for processing and having pickling, canning or universal purposes. For home and industrial preservation, they usually take small greens that fit well in jars. Some housewives close very small pickles (3-5 cm) or gherkins (Group I - 5.1-7 cm, Group II - 7.1-9 cm) - children especially like such cucumbers. Those who prefer sweeter (salad) but large-fruited options, such as Zozulya F1, either pick cucumbers before they have grown, or cut them into pieces before putting them in jars.

Preparing cucumbers for pickling

For conservation, it is best to use freshly picked greens. If you plan to close them only after a few days, then you need to store in the refrigerator. The longer they are stored, the longer they should be soaked before salting or pickling.

Harvested cucumber crop first sort and discard all overgrown and overripe, spoiled and damaged specimens. Zelentsy suitable in size and appearance are thoroughly washed, cleaning from dust, dirt and wax deposits. Then they put it in a large container, pour it with cold water and let it stand for several hours (from 2-3 to 8-10 depending on the size and freshness). In progress soaking water is changed several times, rinsing greens and removing dry remains of flowers from the tops. Many people are concerned about the question of whether it is possible to salt bitter cucumbers. Experienced housewives claim that it is quite, since cucumber bitterness disappears during soaking, especially if you first cut off the stalks or the places where they break off along with part of the base.

Cucumber preservation is very capricious. So that jars with pickles do not become cloudy and do not explode, some advise making preparations on days that are favorable according to the lunar calendar: on the waning moon (in phase 3-4) during its passage through the signs of Aries, Taurus, Leo, Sagittarius and Capricorn. There is also an opinion that women should not be engaged in canning during menstruation. You can listen to such advice and signs, but, in any case, when it is better and how to pickle cucumbers correctly - everyone decides on their own.

Important stages of preparation are also considered tare selection for salting and necessary ingredients. In the old days, cucumbers were salted exclusively in barrels or tubs of untarred oak. Now, not everyone can afford such a luxury: barrels are almost impossible to find, and storing them in a city apartment is not very convenient, so housewives, with large volumes of blanks, mostly manage with enameled pans or plastic buckets, and in most cases they immediately use glass jars.

A barrel of pickles was often lowered to the bottom of the river and taken out only in the spring. Prolonged salting at a cold temperature provided richness of taste and aroma, as well as indescribable crunchiness.

The second most important ingredient (after cucumbers) is salt. In conservation, it is customary to use stone food large, not iodized salt. Some people think that coarsely ground sea salt gives a good taste to the preparations, but this is a controversial point: you can not guess with the dosage, since you need to put it more than the traditional one (at the same time, sea salt is much more expensive). Water quality also plays an important role. If there is no well or spring at hand, then some purified one is needed.

Of the remaining ingredients, preliminary preparation is also needed. garlic,greenery and capsicum. Garlic cloves are peeled and cut into pieces, dill and all kinds of leaves (horseradish, blackcurrant, cherry, tarragon, oak) - washed, and if desired, also scalded with boiling water; Peppers are washed and cut: Bulgarian is cleaned from seeds, bitter is usually not.

The most popular recipes for harvesting cucumbers

You can pickle cucumbers cold way: by fermentation in the process of lactic acid fermentation, and hot way pouring boiling water. Cold pickling is definitely healthier, but takes longer to cook. Hot is faster, but it often uses an additional preservative (vinegar), that is, cucumbers are actually pickled.

Proponents of a healthy diet successfully replace store-bought (9%) vinegar with natural: apple, grape, etc., but add it 1.5 times more. We offer you the most popular and simple recipes with step-by-step cooking technology.

Cucumbers cooked in a cold way, when fermented, retain all the nutrients and acquire a mild sourness.

Servings/Volume: 2-3 liter jars

Ingredients:

• fresh cucumbers - 2 kg;
• rock salt - 90-120 g;
• water - 1.5-2 l;
• dill, umbrellas - 3 pcs.;
• garlic - 3-6 cloves;
• a leaf of cherry, blackcurrant, oak - 3 pcs.;
• horseradish, leaves or root (in pieces) - 3 pcs.

Technology cooking:

1. The bottom of the prepared container, for example a three-liter jar, is lined with leaves, dill and chopped garlic are added.
2. In parallel, a brine is prepared at the rate of 60 g of salt per 1 liter of water.
3. The jar is filled with cucumbers, previously soaked in cold water for 3-6 hours. The bottom row is usually made from the largest cucumbers, placing them vertically, close to each other. The rest are placed as convenient.
4. The filled container is poured with brine - at room temperature or slightly warm (not higher than 35-40 ℃). Warm filling stimulates the activity of lactic acid bacteria, which accelerates the start of fermentation.
5. The jar is covered with a lid or a layer of gauze; in containers with a wide neck, the contents are covered with a flat plate and a small oppression is placed on it so that the cucumbers are completely covered with brine.
6. The workpiece is kept for 3-4 days at room temperature. Then it is necessary to interrupt the process of intensive fermentation, otherwise the cucumbers may turn sour, soften and lose their crunchiness. To do this, the container with cucumbers is removed to a cold room or heat treatment is carried out: the brine is poured into an enameled pan and boiled for 5 minutes, the cucumbers are washed with hot water, poured with boiling brine (if it is not enough, you can add boiling water); jars are covered with lids and sterilized for 12-15 minutes, after which they are immediately sealed hermetically.

When using cold brine and without heat treatment, it will take about a month for cucumbers to pickle. You can store cucumbers pickled in this way without sterilization in the refrigerator in jars under nylon lids or in a large container in the basement. And it is convenient to put sterilized and hermetically sealed jars in a pantry or kitchen cabinet, where they will be safely preserved even at normal temperature.

In old recipes there are recommendations to pickle cucumbers in barrels along with small watermelons. Many housewives also make pickled cucumbers and green or brown tomatoes.

This is perhaps the easiest recipe that has many variations. Cucumbers with quick heat treatment are cooked much faster and remain crispy, and various combinations of spices and spices help to diversify the shades of taste and aroma.

Servings/Volume: 6-7 liter jars

Ingredients:

• fresh cucumbers - 5 kg;
• rock salt - 120-150 g;
• water - 3 l;
• dill, umbrellas - 6-7 pieces;
• Bulgarian pepper - 3-4 pcs.;
• hot pepper - 1-6 pcs. (depending on size);
• garlic - 6-7 cloves;
• a leaf of cherry, blackcurrant - 6-7 pcs.;
• horseradish leaf - 3 pcs.

Technology cooking:

1. After standard preparation, cucumbers are laid out in jars, on the bottom of which leaves, dill, pepper and garlic are placed.
2. Prepare the brine by adding salt to the heated water, bring to a boil and boil for 2-3 minutes, stirring, so that the salt is completely dissolved.
3. Filled jars are poured with boiling brine, covered with lids and left at room temperature for 5-7 days. In boiling water, most of the bacteria die, and the cucumbers do not ferment, but simply salt out. You can start eating them in just a few hours as lightly salted.
4. For long-term storage, the workpiece is either removed to a cold place or the brine is drained, brought to a boil and the cucumbers are re-filled with it. Jars can be sealed immediately after the second filling or after additional sterilization/pasteurization in a pot of boiling/hot water or in the oven.
5. The corked jars are turned upside down, wrapped in an old blanket and left to cool completely. Then stored under normal conditions.

Hot pickled cucumbers are good as an independent snack and are suitable for adding to various dishes, as they do not contain excess acid.

Video

We picked up some more interesting video recipes for pickling cucumbers - with mustard, with vodka and with chili ketchup:

For several years she worked as an editor of a television program with leading ornamental plants in Ukraine. At the dacha, of all types of agricultural work, she prefers harvesting, but for this she is ready to regularly weed, chop, stepchild, water, tie up, thin out, etc. I am convinced that the most delicious vegetables and fruits are self-grown!

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Both humus and compost are rightfully the basis of organic farming. Their presence in the soil significantly increases the yield and improves the taste of vegetables and fruits. In terms of properties and appearance, they are very similar, but they should not be confused. Humus - rotted manure or bird droppings. Compost - rotted organic residues of various origins (spoiled food from the kitchen, tops, weeds, thin twigs). Humus is considered a better fertilizer, compost is more accessible.

Tomatoes have no natural protection against late blight. If late blight attacks, any tomatoes die (and potatoes too), no matter what is said in the description of the varieties (“late blight-resistant varieties” is just a marketing ploy).

Humus - rotted manure or bird droppings. It is prepared like this: manure is piled in a heap or pile, layering it with sawdust, peat and garden soil. The collar is covered with a film to stabilize the temperature and humidity (this is necessary to increase the activity of microorganisms). Fertilizer "ripens" within 2-5 years - depending on external conditions and the composition of the feedstock. The output is a loose homogeneous mass with a pleasant smell of fresh earth.

It is believed that some vegetables and fruits (cucumbers, stalk celery, all varieties of cabbage, peppers, apples) have a “negative calorie content”, that is, more calories are expended during digestion than they contain. In fact, only 10-20% of the calories received from food are consumed in the digestive process.

Compost - rotted organic residues of various origins. How to do? Everything is put in a pile, a pit or a large box: kitchen leftovers, tops of garden crops, weeds mowed before flowering, thin twigs. All this is interbedded with phosphorite flour, sometimes straw, earth or peat. (Some summer residents add special composting accelerators.) Cover with foil. In the process of overheating, the pile is periodically stirred or pierced to bring in fresh air. Usually compost "ripens" for 2 years, but with modern additives it can be ready in one summer season.

It is necessary to collect medicinal flowers and inflorescences at the very beginning of the flowering period, when the content of nutrients in them is as high as possible. The flowers are supposed to be torn by hand, breaking off the rough pedicels. Dry the collected flowers and herbs, scattering in a thin layer, in a cool room at natural temperature without access to direct sunlight.

“Frost-resistant” varieties of garden strawberries (more often simply “strawberries”) also need shelter, like ordinary varieties (especially in those regions where there are snowless winters or frosts alternating with thaws). All strawberries have superficial roots. This means that without shelter, they freeze out. Assurances of sellers that strawberries are “frost-resistant”, “winter-hardy”, “tolerate frosts down to -35 ℃”, etc. are a lie. Gardeners should remember that no one has yet been able to change the root system of strawberries.

Oklahoma farmer Carl Burns developed an unusual variety of colorful corn called Rainbow Corn. The grains on each cob are of different colors and shades: brown, pink, purple, blue, green, etc. This result was achieved through many years of selection of the most colored ordinary varieties and their crossing.