• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
The Art of Doing Stuff
menu icon
go to homepage
  • HOUSE
  • COOKING
  • GARDEN
  • HOW-TO
  • EXTRA
  • Subscribe
    • Facebook
    • Instagram
    • Pinterest
    • Twitter
  • search icon
    Homepage link
    • HOUSE
    • COOKING
    • GARDEN
    • HOW-TO
    • EXTRA
    • Subscribe
    • Facebook
    • Instagram
    • Pinterest
    • Twitter
  • ×
    Home » Cooking Stuff

    Fermented Dill Pickle Recipe (Old-Fashioned & Made in a Crock)

    August 31, 2021 by Karen 126 Comments

    Pin6K
    Share
    Email
    6K Shares
    Jump to Recipe - Print Recipe

    I need you to put your Laura Ingalls bonnet on now because you’re going to learn how to make old-fashioned fermented dill pickles in a crock.

    Not the vinegary kind. The kind that ferments slowly on your counter. The kind that develops flavour, character, and makes you look homesteadey.

    Overhead shot of an antique pickle crock filled with pickles on a rough, grey painted wood floor.

    Table of Contents

    • What Is a Kosher Dill Pickle?
    • My First Pickling Attempt? A Salty, Sad Mess.
    • The Book That Saved My Pickles
    • What You Need to Make Crock Fermented Dill Pickles
    • Step-by-Step Fermented Dill Pickle Recipe
    • How to Keep Your Pickles Crunchy
    • Optional: Low-Temperature Pasteurization for Shelf Stability
    • Instructions
    • Are Pickling Cucumbers Really Necessary?
    • What to Add (or Not Add)
    • Are You Sure They’re Done?
    • Shelf Life
    • Kosher Dill Pickles

    What Is a Kosher Dill Pickle?

    It’s not about religious dietary rules—it’s about Jewish deli style: garlicky, sour, and fermented naturally without vinegar.

    • Vinegar pickles = fast, shelf-stable, no probiotics
    • Fermented pickles = slow, naturally sour, full of gut-friendly bacteria

    Kosher dills are what dill pickles want to be when they grow up.


    My First Pickling Attempt? A Salty, Sad Mess.

    I tried fermenting pickles when I first moved into my house about 25 years ago and I have never been so excited to rot something.

    (O.K., fermenting isn’t rotting. But it sounds more daring. Less hippie, more mad scientist.)

    Whatever salt-to-water ratio I used must have been pulled from a salt lick, because what I ended up with were soft, inedible salt bombs.


    The Book That Saved My Pickles

    Overhead shot of Fermentation book resting on antique crock sitting on porch floor.

    Eventually I switched to a recipe from Sandor Katz’s Wild Fermentation. Since the book helped me create my own sourdough starter, I figured it could handle pickles. And with a name like Katz, he clearly understands both fermentation and a good pastrami sandwich.

    And I was right—these pickles are the real deal. If you're around me, and remember Strub's pickles ... these are like those.


    What You Need to Make Crock Fermented Dill Pickles

    Two baskets of fresh pickling cucumbers set on a white tea towel with antique crock in the background and dill laid about.
    • Pickling cucumbers (small and firm)
    • Salt (non-iodized: kosher or pickling)
    • Fresh dill (or dill seed/dill heads)
    • Optional: garlic, peppercorns, horseradish/grape/oak leaves (for crunch)
    • A fermentation crock or large glass jar
    • Water (unchlorinated is best)

    I use a classic 2 gallon crock with the weights to keep the pickles down.

    Step-by-Step Fermented Dill Pickle Recipe

    Pouring water into antique brown and cream crock filled with pickling cucumbers.

    This is a traditional half-sour recipe using a 3.95% brine.*

    I used to make a saltier brine because it helped the pickles store longer. But I prefer this lower salt ratio—it just tastes better. And since I now process my fermented pickles, I don’t need the salt for preservation anymore—just for flavour.

    1. Soak Your Cucumbers

    Soak them in ice water for 2–4 hours before fermenting. It helps with crunch.

    2. Cut Off the Blossom Ends

    Karen Bertelsen prepping cucumbers at butcher block countertop.

    The blossom end (narrower tip) has an enzyme that causes softening. Get rid of it.

    3. Make the Brine

    Use a 3.95% brine:
    🧂 5 tablespoons of pickling salt per 8 cups (2 quarts) of water
    Make enough to just cover 8 lbs of cucumbers in a 2 gallon crock.

    4. Pack the Crock

    Layer in dill, garlic, and cucumbers. Shove it all in there. Add optional leaves or spices.

    5. Pour in Brine & Weigh Down

    Cover everything with the brine.
    Use pickle weights or a plate + clean rock to keep cucumbers submerged.

    Would you like to save this stuff?

    We'll email you this post, so you can refer to it later.

    6. Cover & Ferment

    Water in antique crock at the first stages of fermentation with bubbles forming on the surface.

    Cover the crock with a lid or towel so flies don't get in. Let ferment at 65–75°F.
    After 3–4 weeks, your pickles will be fully fermented. Start tasting around Day 10 if you like.

    7. Store

    Move to the fridge when they taste good. They’ll last months chilled.


    How to Keep Your Pickles Crunchy

    • Soak in ice water first
    • Cut off the blossom end The blossom end (it will be the more narrow end) contains an enzyme that causes pickles to soften when they ferment.
    • Add tannin-rich leaves (grape, oak, horseradish)
    • Use Pickle Crisp (calcium chloride) to keep crunch
    • Skip heat processing OR use low-temp pasteurization (see below)

    Optional: Low-Temperature Pasteurization for Shelf Stability

    If you want to process them but keep some crunch:

    Instructions

    🫙 - Pack fully fermented pickles into clean, sterilized jars
    💦 - Bring your brine to a boil, then remove from heat
    🔥 - Fill a canning pot with water and heat to 180–185°F
    Use a thermometer or sous vide stick to maintain temperature
    🫗 - Pour hot brine into jars, leaving ½-inch headspace
    🧼 - Wipe rims, apply lids and rings
    🌡️ - Submerge sealed jars in 180–185°F water
    ⏲️ - Process for 30 minutes, keeping temperature steady
    🧊 - Remove jars and let cool at room temperature
    🧺 - Store in pantry for years


    Are Pickling Cucumbers Really Necessary?

    You bet they are. Pickling cucumbers are shorter, firmer, and hold up during fermentation.
    Regular cucumbers will turn to mush. I speak from experience.


    What to Add (or Not Add)

    At minimum, you need:
    ✔️ Cucumbers
    ✔️ Salt
    ✔️ Dill
    ✔️ Water

    Garlic is optional. So are peppercorns, mustard seeds, and bedtime stories. But don't go overboard—fermented dill pickles are about simplicity.


    Are You Sure They’re Done?

    They’re ready when:

    • They’ve turned translucent
    • They taste sour and delicious
    • You start hiding them from people

    Shelf Life

    What determines the shelf life of your pickle is how much salt it contains. A full-sour pickle has a brine that is 10% salt. You could leave those for years and they'd still be preserved perfectly because of the amount of salt. They'd also taste like the Dead Sea.

    For pickles that are half-sours, like these, if you want to keep them around for months store them in the fridge or process them.


    Kosher Dill Pickles

    Kosher Dill Pickles like the kind you'd find at a good old fashioned Jewish deli.
    4.77 from 13 votes
    Print Pin Rate
    Course: Canning/Preserves
    Cuisine: They say it's from New York.
    Prep Time: 5 hours hours
    Fermenting Period: 30 days days
    Total Time: 30 days days 5 hours hours
    Servings: 9 pint jars
    Calories: 224kcal

    Ingredients

    • 8 pounds cucumbers small to medium size
    • 5 tablespoons kosher or pickling salt More if canning
    • 9 dill heads fresh
    • 1 handful fresh grape cherry, oak, and/or
    • horseradish leaves if available
    • 1 pinch black peppercorns
    • 8 cups water
    • 1 head garlic cloves skinned and separated

    If you want to process/can add these ingredients to the brine:

    • 1 cup pickling salt This will replace the 9 Tbsps.
    • ½ cup vinegar

    Instructions

    • Bring salt and water to a boil, stirring to dissolve the salt. Let cool.
    • Wash your cucumbers and cut off the "blossom" end.  You just need to remove the blossom part.*
    • Layer your cucumbers, dill and horseradish (or grape leaves) in the crock and cover with cooled salt water.
    • Place a plate with a rock (or something else heavy) on top of the pickles to make sure they're completely submerged.  
    • Test pickles after a couple of weeks. 
    • Cucumbers will be translucent throughout when they're done.
    • Place pickles in hot pint jars with enough brine to cover them and store in the fridge for several months.

    Low Heat Processing

    • Fill a canning pot with water and warm it to between 180 F - 185 F.
    • Remove pickles from the brine and stuff them tightly into pint jars.
    • Pour brine into a pot and heat until it comes to a boil. Boil for 5 minutes.
    • Pour hot brine into the jars of pickles to ½" from the rim.
    • Wipe the rim of the jars to make sure they're perfectly clean and put on a sealer and rim. Finger tighten only.
    • Place your jars of pickles into the warm water bath and process for 30 minutes making sure the water doesn't fall below 180 F or go above 185 F.

    Notes

    FOR CANNING
    • You must add more salt (than the original recipe) and vinegar to aid in the preservation process. 
    • Pickles get softer over time so for maximum crunch eat them within 6 months.
     
    • The blossom end portion of the cucumber is said to make the pickles soft, so get rid of it. I've done my own experiments with this and it seems to be true. 

    Nutrition

    Calories: 224kcal


    Mazel Tov! You're ready to make deli-style pickles.


    Fermented Dill Pickle Recipe (Old-Fashioned & Made in a Crock)

    More COOKING stuff

    • Cleaning Copper with Ketchup: A No-Rub Experiment
    • Creamy Pesto Pasta with Zucchini & Goat Cheese
    • 5 Delicious Things To Make With Rhubarb
    • Guaranteed Crispy Sweet Potato Fries & Sriracha Mayo Dip

    Reader Interactions

    Comments

      Leave a Reply Cancel reply

      Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

      Recipe Rating




      The maximum upload file size: 512 MB. You can upload: image, audio. Links to YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and other services inserted in the comment text will be automatically embedded. Drop file here

    1. Anna

      September 14, 2024 at 3:49 pm

      I've had these fermenting for 3 weeks, and when I pulled one out to taste it, it was nothing but salt - no sour at all. Can I fix this?

      Reply
    2. Anna

      September 14, 2024 at 3:39 pm

      I followed this recipe with the conversion for canning (1 cup pickling salt, 1/2 cup vinegar). It's been 3 weeks, and when I tried a pickle is was ALL salt, not a sour tinge to it. Have I not left it long enough? Can I fix this?

      Reply
    3. Jen

      September 03, 2024 at 7:44 am

      I want to can these fermented pickles. I ferment first with the nine tablespoons of salt first then when I am ready to can I add the one cup of salt to the original recipe

      Reply
    4. Mandy

      August 22, 2024 at 8:41 pm

      These turned out delicious! I have one question though…if my brine formed a bit of what I think was kahm yeast while fermenting in the crock (I scooped off as best I could daily), would you still use the fermented brine to store your pickles? Or would you make a fresh brine for when you transfer the pickles to jars for storage in the fridge? Thank you!!

      Reply
      • Karen

        August 22, 2024 at 11:54 pm

        Hi Mandy! I would use that same (yeast covered) brine. I'm just about to open a jar from last year. :) ~ karen!

        Reply
        • Mandy

          August 23, 2024 at 4:32 pm

          Perfect! Thank you so much!!

      • MICHAEL SAMPSON

        October 07, 2024 at 4:46 pm

        Just placed the second batch in the water bath with the sous vide at 180°. In total my 5 gallon crock did 9 quarts that I canned and 2 quarts in plastic deli containers in the refrigerator. They were salty but pretty damn good.

        Reply
    5. Cynthia Fletcher

      June 05, 2024 at 12:15 pm

      Can I use any type of oak leaves? I have many oaks that produce acorns and thought about using the leaves but didn’t want to risk it until I knew for sure if they are safe to use.

      Reply
      • Karen

        June 07, 2024 at 12:33 pm

        Hi Cynthia. Any oak or grape leaf is fine. :) ~ karen!

        Reply
    6. Natasha sansotta

      December 17, 2023 at 5:04 am

      Any tips on how to store cucumbers until you have enough to pickle? I'm growing mine

      Reply
      • Karen

        December 17, 2023 at 11:21 am

        Good question! You really do need to grow a lot of pickling cucumber plants to get enough to pickle at the same time. I typically grow 16 or so plants and that seems to work for me so that I don't have to store them for too long in the fridge before I can start pickling. I just put them in a crisper in my fridge with the lid cracked a little bit. You can also tightly wrap the cucumbers in plastic wrap to keep them in good condition for quite a while - just make sure they're perfectly dry before you wrap them. ~ karen!

        Reply
    7. Dan

      August 23, 2023 at 1:41 pm

      after they are ready do you make fresh brine or use the brine they fermented in and store in fridge?

      Reply
      • Karen

        August 25, 2023 at 10:53 am

        Hi Dan. Good question. You use the old fermented brine - it's what will preserve them. ~ karen!

        Reply
        • MICHAEL SAMPSON

          October 07, 2024 at 4:45 pm

          Just placed the second batch in the water bath with the sous vide at 180°. In total my 5 gallon crock did 9 quarts that I canned and 2 quarts in plastic deli containers in the refrigerator. They were salty but pretty damn good.

        • Karen

          October 14, 2024 at 1:11 am

          At least you can get the salt out if you want to! That's the remarkable thing about pickles. ~ karen!

    8. Saramaria

      September 04, 2022 at 8:44 am

      I’m on day 5 and I have no fermentation bubbles and my pickles are way salty! Do I add more water to cut the salt?

      Reply
    9. John Allan Montgomery

      August 27, 2022 at 5:16 am

      Do you add vinegar and salt to the crock on day one?

      Reply
    10. Tamara

      July 30, 2022 at 8:11 pm

      I want to can these and my brine is really cloudy, is that normal?

      Reply
    11. Kristin Ferguson

      September 09, 2021 at 5:48 pm

      Where does one find horseradish leaves?

      Reply
    12. Jeanne

      September 01, 2021 at 8:18 am

      I would love to try this but all I have are large cukes. Will this recipe still work? Also, can I use canning jars to ferment rather than a crock? I have fermented cabbage in jars and it works great. Thanks for everything you do!

      Reply
      • Karen

        September 01, 2021 at 10:55 am

        Hi Jeanne! You can indeed ferment in canning jars, it's just a bit easier in the bigger crock. A larger cucumber won't be the same because they'll end up very very mushy and probably full of seeds. But you can buy pickling cucumbers at this time of year for about $5 for a basket. I'd go that route if you can. ~ karen!

        Reply
      • Kristin

        September 09, 2021 at 5:57 pm

        I can't rate this recipe yet since my pickles are only two days in the jars, but I am using large jars; the kind with the wire gizmo to snap them shut. But I am not snapping them shut since that would be risky in case I forget to burp the jars every day. Instead, I filled two plastic baggies with enough water to fill the space that remains in my two jars, plus a little air so they stay on the surface, and tied them shut. They weigh the pickles down and keep them submerged, and they spread out and mold to the surface of the brine but can still fit in through the smaller opening in the jars, and any gas can escape around the edges. I'd post a picture but I don't think this site allows it.

        Reply
    « Older Comments

    Primary Sidebar

    SHOP ON AMAZON

    Use it 👆 to support my work. LEARN MORE

    My name is Karen Bertelsen and I was a television host. In Canada. Which means in terms of notoriety and wealth, I was somewhere on par with the manager of a Sunset Tan in Wisconsin.

    I quit television to start a blog with the goal that I could make my living through blogging and never have to host a television show again. And it’s worked out. I’m making a living blogging. If you’re curious, this is how I do that.

    So I’m doing this in reverse basically. I’m the only blogger who is trying to NOT get a TV show.

    More about me 👋

    Seasonal Articles

    • Plantar Wart or Corn? Same Gross Problem, Same Surprisingly Easy Fix
    • Today's Puzzle: Welcome to Sidewalk Daycare
    • Today's Puzzle: 72% Chance of Greasefire
    • Today's Puzzle: Literature, SPF 30, & Processed Cheese
    • This Fruit Fly Trap Catches 25X More Than Your Bowl of Vinegar Does
    • Apple Watch Band Stuck? How to Remove It.

    Popular Articles

    • This Is Where I Try To Buy Your Love
    • A Year Full of Pots: Win Sarah Raven's New Book
    • The Difference Between People Who Eat Mayo & People Who Eat Miracle Whip
    • Your FIRST look at my new kitchen in Canadian Living Magazine.
    • How to Print an Image on Wood.
    • What's Your Favourite Book of ALL Time?

    Footer

    as seen in

    About

    • About
    • Contact
    • Privacy Policy

    Newsletter

    • Sign Up! for emails and updates

    Social

    • Facebook
    • Instagram
    • Twitter
    • Pinterest
    5936 shares