I noticed: if the right to appear in the kitchen and drive lunch or dinner for a man is still left, then it is worth starting speech about "seaming", as the interlocutors make big eyes and immediately ask a strange question: what do you have, wives no?
Therefore, I answer in advance, there is a wife, I just love to cook from the two of us. I have the right. Who wants to object? Well, that's the same ...
I think many have understood that today we are talking about canning. Yes, not simple, but sacred, so to speak. Saint almost. About pickling cucumbers! Last year I already wrote about salting cucumbers, but since then a lot of water has flowed under the bridge, new information has appeared - or maybe not new. But just in case I will share it with you.
So, the dosage of spices
With this I have eternal problems. I would like to make cucumbers as aromatic and piquant as possible, but... It is very easy to overdo it with spices. Especially with garlic.
Our information is that the maximum allowable amount of garlic when pickling cucumbers is 12-15 grams per 1 kg of cucumbers. Otherwise, the garlic flavor will prevail. If someone likes the dominant garlic, then the amount can be increased. I prefer the symphony of garlic and cucumber, in which the leading role is still given to the cucumber. So this year I will experiment - observe this proportion.
Water
For quite a long time, I believed that bottled water should be used for salting, since it almost analogous to a well - there are no chemicals that are used for purification, evil, fluoride and everything other things.
However, it was not necessary once at a time. And cucumbers, even salted in bottled water, stopped crunching (while retaining all the organoleptic qualities of an intact product).
This is because the hardness of the water affects the crunch of the cucumber. Cucumbers will crunch in hard water. Unless, of course, you boil them, ferment them, and let them ferment and so on.
In soft, cucumber crunch preservation is unlikely.
The cucumbers themselves
I will not write anything about soaking and so on, I will write how to distinguish a pickled variety from a salad variety. Even a teapot.
How do I usually tell them apart? I asked the saleswomen:
- Are they suitable for salting?
Nice grannies used to nod and say:
- There is no better grade, my dear, I salt it myself.
And then it turned out that the purchased cucumbers for pickling were not at all ah.
Having gained experience, I began to look at the skin: whether it is dense or not very. Cucumbers with dense skin are salted poorly, unevenly. But there is an easier way: you need to look at the place where the cucumber has a tail. If the surface is flat, smooth, there are few "edges" (they write that it is less than 4) then this is a salad variety. You cannot salt it.