I recorded videos of me making the pickles, but to condense it I will summarize my journey on the web- a "leisure project" I picked up myself even before this class.
The reason why I wanted to get into pickling was because of my mom. Pickling is a strong part of Asian culture, and my mom is always pickling foods. In Japanese culture, pickling is said to help with digestion (hence the ginger always found with sushi). Pickling is originally a strong Chinese practice, to help ensure food stays safe during non-harvesting seasons, but due to the flavor and the practicality Japan adopted it (tsukemono) from trade! When I was on chinese herbs for my acne, my herbologist always told me to eat something "hot" to help with health, including pickled foods like Kimchi. I don't want to overflow this site with every single trial and error (I made videos and the overall time for the whole thing was 30 minutes) so I'm just going to put the main parts of my journey here.
In all of my pickling, I would use: dill, sugar, salt, mustard seed, pepper, and garlic.
My first batch of pickles was not good. I forgot to add water to my pickles, so they were incredibly vinegary and salty. It would have been perfect for a pregnant woman's cravings, but not for anybody else. I bought a gallon of vinegar from Aldi because I knew that I would be pickling a lot, but the large amount that I had made me forget that I didn't have to use all of it. If you look at the picture, you can see how foggy it is.
Friend rating average: 4/10
My second batch of pickles I learned from this mistake, and did a 50/50 ratio of water to vinegar. The thing that I messed up this time was that I made the cucumber pieces too big, so the outside was more pickled than the inside. I kinda liked it, but that's not what a typical pickle should be.
Friend rating average: 6/10
The next few batches I made, I perfected the ratios. I even started making pickled onions in addition to the regular pickles I was making- and my friends really liked them when they were inebriated! I hope to tell you more once we are talking in person.
Friend rating averages: 7/10; 7/10; 9/10