Pickled Dill and Mustard Carrots

With the previous batch of carrots consumed and the jars free for reuse, I ventured out and purchased another two kilograms of grocery store carrots for second run at pickling.  From some additional research, I made two slight changes to the brine.  Using the same salt concentration, I also added some citric acid in the form of lemon juice.  I used only a couple drops, not even a full teaspoon, just to lower the acidity a bit to see if it had an impact.  Additionally, I read that calcium chloride keeps pickles crunchy; I have quite a bit of calcium chloride that I use in order to form a better curd when making cheese, so I threw a bit of that in the brine, too.

In addition to dusting the bottom of the vessel with dill leaves, I also put in a generous amount of mustard seed.  Some online sources mention that mustard can be a good anti-bacterial agent for the bad bacteria.

The final alteration to my first attempt was pure laziness.  Instead of waiting exactly a week, I waited until I needed the space on my counter, which ended up being a little over two weeks.  The carbon dioxide had stopped escaping after about ten days (i.e., the ‘blooping’ stopped), and there really is no hurry to transfer the carrots to jars, so it seemed to work out – or at least make sense to me.

The Results

The Mustard: When I opened up the vessel, I was surprised that the fuzzy white mold was much less pronounced than it was in my first attempt.  I am attributing this to the mustard seed, and I plan on continuing to use them as I move forward.  Plus, all of the outgassing smell was quite pleasant with that additive.

The Citric Acid: I am chalking this one up as unnecessary.  I have read some suggestions that one should add brine from a previous pickling to the fresh brine (or simply reuse).  While this would add some initial acidity, I believe the true intent was to introduce previously successful microorganisms to the process.  Going forward, I will use a bit or all of the brine from a previous make, and leave the lemon juice out of the process.

The Laziness: This was a surprising win.  My previous batch had an unfortunate bite to it – as if the carrots had a bit of pop-rocks imbedded in them.  I am going to attribute the smoothness of the pickled carrots to the fact that I did not try to rush its fermentation.  I would highly recommend a bit of laziness in pickling.

The Calcium Chloride: I am simply going to assume that this was helpful in maintaining the crunchiness.  The texture was not too different from the previous batch, but more of the carrot sticks maintained a good firmness.  I will attribute that to the calcium chloride.

Next: I saw some radishes at the grocery store; I am curious to see what I can do with those…