However, when I’m really craving a vinegar hit, I head to this awful chain of what can only be described as “Okie-Mex” restaurants in my area. Besides their beans and salsa bar, there is little to like there, except the king of vinaigrette dressings. It’s made of cheap ingredients, I’m certain it’s just Cisco crap. But they put crack in it, or something, but it is much thinner/lighter than the standard vinegar to oil ratio. They serve it on shredded iceberg in a little paper cup and it comes with every meal. It wilts the lettuce a little and it’s kind of like some crazy slaw. But taken as a whole, it’s bright and fresh and I’m really glad they over-dress it!

As an aside, I’m going to admit a super-guilty pleasure of mine, and I almost feel dirty admitting this in public, but… I am fascinated by the TLC shows about American gypsies. The teen girls and most of the mothers are almost universally built like the proverbial brick shit houses. While the cameras were rolling one day they were standing in the kitchen drinking shots. No, not alcohol, their society frowns on women drinking alcohol. They were drinking shots of vinegar and claimed it was responsible for their figures!

I thought it sounded kind of suspect, but now you seem to agree with them. I’m going to have to give this more thought! If a shot of vinegar is what it takes, I’ll go back to the bad Okie-Mex place and buy a gallon of salad dressing, pour off the canola oil and drink it in shots! (Heaven knows I’ve drunk it out of the paper salad cups before!) Heck, they might even make me a batch without adding the oil in the first place!

How very cool. I’m preparing some pickles based on your recipe in anticipation of Saturnalia (Xmas) because I need something to help offset turkey and porchetta.

We had Korean neighbors years ago and they made three “classes” of kimchee: a quick-ferment which I think took about a week or so, and a longer ferment of more than a month which they sometimes buried in their back yard if they were making a really large batch.

If I recall, theirs had small dried shrimp, primarily because octopi and really good-quality fresh shrimp wasn’t really available in Alberta back then.

I’m looking forward to Amy presenting your kimchee in some of her food.

I had a lot of fun putting that pickle bar together. There are hundreds of versions of kimchi, and the recipe I followed came from “Wild Fermentation” by Sandor Katz and did not have any fish sauce or oysters or any fishy component whatsoever. But you’re right that a lot of kimchi recipes do! I’d like to try this and think it would add a lot to the flavor profile.
To add to this thread, I love the kimchi description given by Hi Soo Shin Hepinstall in “Growing Up in a Korean Kitchen,” “The most important spices are fresh and powdered hot red peppers, which give the kimchi its biting zest and help seal in its freshness, and crushed garlic and green onions, which enhance its flavor and help to sterilize it. Additional flavor-builders may include ginger, fruits, nuts, and seafood such as salted live baby shrimp, or even octopus and squid. Green seaweed, chonggak, may be added to help retain freshness; in the mountainous region of the northern provinces, where seafood is not available, beef broth is used instead.” So many possibilities! The nice thing about kimchi is it’s a quick ferment and can finish at 5 days! My sauerkraut batches usually go for 3 weeks at least, so this means it’s much easier to recipe test!

Ah! I see that there is already a request that you produce additional pickled products.

I am hoping that someone will at least take a photo of your Xmas porchetta so that the rest of us can see it, seeing as you’re having the turkey talk as I type this.

Tsukemono is just a generic term for pickles in Japanese: among others, there are ones pickled in a bed of rice bran (my favorite but the bran smells horrible), pickled in salt, pickled in umeboshi vinegar (expensive!), and pickled in miso. That last one is for really hard vegetables and you’d have to be ready to wait a couple of months before the pickes come out.

Honey Crisp cider vinegar? Wow – we’re having difficulty getting good Honey Crisp apples. Definitely not available up here but I’ll see if I can get my East Coast source to bring some up.

What are tsukemono pickles?!?!? As for for the kimchi, I don’t know if Suzie puts a fish component in. I’ll have to ask her. She probably does because the taste is authentic (at least to my palette, which is not saying much).

I will have to try this oak barrel aged apple vinegar! I recently discoverd a brand here in the U.S. called ‘O’ that does a HoneyCrisp Apple vinegar that is so darned good I really do drink it straight from the bottle and ii is barrel aged too – and expensive.

I should also mention, to anyone who’s reading this that the salt and sugar amounts of any pickling brine should be adjusted depending on the strength and sweetness of the vinegar….

Good timing yet again on this post. I just did my canning (steam ovens are great) a have been playing around with Japanese pickles (tsukemono), but most of those don’t ferment with vinegar bases. However it’s time to start gearing up for the Xmas rush and an interesting pickle or several will help cut the lean eating sensation that is porchetta.

I find it interesting that her kimchi doesn’t have a fish component (not sure but I think oysters are traditional) to boost the umami, but it sounds like her process works and works well so we need photos! And hopefully you’ll discuss the cucumber pickles at some point too.

I also bought a vinegar that you might find interesting as an ingredient and a tipple: it’s an apple cider vinegar (big whoop, right?) that’s been aged for 12 years in oak barrels.