In Lisa Fortin’s kitchen, six mason jars of pickles sit atop one of the kitchen counters. That doesn’t include the jar in the fridge that her four children have been munching on all week.
Fortin’s path to making pickles is not the typical passed-down recipe, but a more new age pickle. She doesn’t make what is currently considered the standard vinegar-based pickle, but instead does a lacto-fermented pickle that sits for about a week in a salt water brine before it’s ready to eat.
Fortin found fermented pickling through research on nutrition, health and probiotics. Unlike vinegar pickling, she uses a method of fermentation where some bacteria are killed, but not all. Fermentation allows for live bacteria cultures to exist, which makes the pickles a probiotic food.
But there are some staples in Fortin’s method that all picklers can use, no matter the method.
She starts with pickling cucumbers from Atlas Farm Store, where she works during the summer. Fortin’s method uses oak leaves, which have tannins that give the pickles crunch, and then adds sliced cucumbers, dill, garlic, water and salt. She packs the slices in the jar, adds the extras, then the salt and the water. Unlike canned pickles, she puts the lid on the jar and then slightly unscrews it to allow for pressure to escape as the pickles ferment.
The finished jars then go to the top shelf in her kitchen, where they’ll sit for about a week before being ready to eat. Her kids devour them and also help her make them, which is a fun and easy activity for her family to do together.
Fortin says that if there’s a secret recipe to her pickles, it’s that they’re so simple.
“The secret is really that there’s no secret,” she said.
Others in the Pioneer Valley stick with more standard pickles.
Armaund Bouthillier is the Franklin County fair canning and pickling judge. He’s been judging for about three years, and before that entered his bread and butter pickles for about 20 years, winning 18 ribbons.
He said that to get the best pickles, the trick is to start with ice cold cucumbers that are fresh from the garden or a farm stand. He lets them sit in an ice bath in the refrigerator overnight, but he said as little as three hours would be enough.
Bouthillier says to look for a good clear juice and a crisp flavorful pickle. Once canned, his bread and butter pickles can last about a year, but rarely do. He said he has friends calling him up for pickles all throughout the summer.
As for a secret? Beyond the cold fresh cucumbers he recommends having fun with it.
“The secret to me is that you have to love doing it or they’re not going to come out right,” he said.
In looking for a cucumber to pickle, smaller is typically better, experts and pickling enthusiasts across the Pioneer Valley say.
Pickling cucumbers are a specific variety of cucumbers that are smaller than a standard cucumber. Go for a pickling cucumber that is roughly three to four inches long and no bigger than two inches in diameter. If they get too large, the seedy center becomes too watery and the pickles won’t have good flavor.
The size also helps those who choose to pickle their cucumbers whole, rather than in slices. If slicing or pickling whole, make sure the cucumbers are similar to each other in size, according to Nikki Ciesluk, whose family owns Ciesluk farm and farm stand.
Ciesluk said she also does bread and butter pickles, and pickles about 400 quarts of cucumbers throughout the summer.
Ciesluk said that it’s a very popular summer vegetable, and that while many come to the farmstand to purchase them for pickling, many also purchase it just to eat as a snack, as is.
Gideon Porth, owner of Atlas Farm, said they grow about two acres of pickling cucumbers a season. He said the bulk of that goes to Real Pickles, a fermented pickling company based in Greenfield, but that the pickling cucumbers also go to other wholesale distributors in the area and are popular in the farm store and farmers markets.
He said they produced and sold about 30,000 pounds of pickling cucumbers this year.
He said it’s a balance between picking the cucumber when it’s still small enough that it’s an ideal pickling cucumber and getting maximum yield out of the plant.
“The name of the game is keeping them on the small size,” he said.
Porth added that if the seed cavity in the center gets too large, the cucumber won’t hold up when pickled.
He said that the farm workers usually pick the cucumbers everyday, because they can get oversized very quickly. The turnover from picking to pickling is quick for many people, who like to do it as soon as they can after purchase, according to Porth.
He said when selecting cucumber to pickle, that customers should look for ones that are fresh and crunchy and not soft.
“Sweet, crunchy and fresh, that’s what people should look for,” he said.
The Atlas farm store also sells specialty salt, vinegar and dill.
But as the pickle season winds down, expect less pickling cucumbers at the farmers markets and farm stands. Porth said there are plenty of other things to pickle once they run out, however. His farm offers a variety of peppers and added that green tomatoes also taste great pickled.
“You can pickle almost anything,” he said.
Reach Miranda Davis at 413-772-0261, ext. 280, or at: mdavis@recorder.com.