Tangy Giardiniera - Lacto-fermented Vegetables!

Giardiniera, or "from the garden" in Italian, is quite popular in places like Chicago, where it is an essential condiment on sandwiches. It consists of fresh vegetables, pickled in a brine usually with a bit of spicy heat. These delightfully pickled vegetables rely on Lactobacillus, rather than yeast to undergo fermentation. This bacteria and it's many strains is naturally found on vegetables grown close to the earth, and it readily eat sugars and convert them into lactic acid in the absence of oxygen. Lactic acid acts as a natural preservative, and harnessing its power has allowed people to preserve foods before the advent of canning and fridges came along.

I made my first batch a couple of months ago, and I'm ready for more, especially since a friend gave me some of the abundance of her tomato harvest. The only equipment needed here is a mason jar and an airlock. I supported a Kickstarter campaign to get mine, but you could get crafty and go about it a DIY way if you choose. 

I start by lining the bottom of my mason jar with a handful of basil leaves. I add cut up vegetables, garlic, and pour over a brine solution. The basic brine is 3 Tbsp salt (I use kosher) to 3 cups of water, ideally filtered or distilled. I love the way cauliflower comes out in this pickling, so I go heavy on it. I've never done tomatoes, so I decided to try. I also added a 1 Tbsp of cane sugar to the brine going into the tomato jar. My last pickling involved a batch of turnips with beets added for color. I added 50% white vinegar to the brine, but I found the addition of vinegar and lack of garlic made for vegetables that were less tasty than just using salt on its own. We'll see what the sugar addition does.

Add at least 3 peeled and whole garlic cloves to each jar, for a more complex flavor. A spicy element is really nice, so keep some of the seeds from the peppers in there. Once it's all put together and brine is added, put the cap and airlock on with a little water in the airlock. Keep in a cool dark place for a week before checking in. Do a taste test every few days to see how things are progressing. My last batch fermented for about 4 weeks and was super nutty, I will probably be keeping this batch going equally long. I'll share the results in a few weeks.