Fermented Pickles

Fermented Pickles

　　To make fermented pickles, you first need to prepare the pickling sauce. Take the filtered residue of the sauce (it’s even better if you grind unfiltered fermented soybeans), add salt, chili, Sichuan peppercorns, fennel seeds, dried ginger, and other seasonings, then simmer in a pot of water until it becomes a thick, paste-like consistency. Let it cool before use. Peel the hard skin off kohlrabi (or you can also use turnips, white radishes, etc.), cut them into large chunks, wash and drain the moisture, layer with salt, and place them in a container such as a jar or crock. Slowly pour the cooled paste into the container so that the liquid seeps down through the gaps between the vegetable pieces, fully submerging them in the sauce. There should be at least an inch and a half of sauce covering the top. Let it ferment naturally. It’s generally ready to eat after about a month. When serving, just slice it up—it’s even better with a bit of vinegar, minced garlic, and sesame oil. Because it ferments many pieces at once like a hen hatching eggs, it's called "fermented pickles" (literally “hatching pickles”). You can also ferment cucumbers this way. In summer, you can also ferment green beans, seedless raw melons, or watermelon rinds with the green skin peeled off. However, these ingredients can easily spoil the sauce, so they should be eaten soon after fermentation and not left too long. Pickle jars are very prone to maggots in the summer, so it’s best to cover them with gauze to keep flies out. But if your pickle jar (or crock) no longer attracts maggots, it’s definitely gone bad—smelly and inedible. You should quickly scoop everything out and re-simmer the sauce.