April 29, 2025 • 26 mins
Pickles. Sounds easy, right? But pickles and pickling are more complicated than you might expect.
We're Bruce Weinstein & Mark Scarbrough, authors of three dozen cookbooks . . . plus a new one out this summer: COLD CANNING. Small-batch canning without a steam or pressure canner, everything designed to make a few jars for the fridge or freezer. If you'd like a copy, you can buy one with this link.
We've got lots of pickles in our new books, so we'd like to talk more about what a pickle is: what it was traditionally, what it now is, and the ways we've created to simplify the process of making pickles.
Here are the segments for this episode of COOKING WITH BRUCE & MARK:
[01:11] Our one-minute cooking tip: Don't confuse salt and soy sauce.
[03:21] All about pickles: traditional, room-temp, lacto-fermentation; short-cut, counter-to-fridge fermentation; and refrigerator pickling.
[26:17] What’s making us happy in food this week: Black lava salt bagels and black berry conserve!
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Hey, I am Bruce Weinstein and this is
the Podcast Cooking with Bruce and Mark.
And I'm Mark Scarborough.
And together with Bruce, we havewritten 36 plus a forthcoming
cookbook called Canning, whichis out in the summer of 2025.
This is our podcastabout food and cooking.
And if you're listening in realtime, we've been off for a week
because, uh, somebody in our team got.
(00:23):
Food poisoning, which is Oh, what fun.
We should make a whole episode about that.
What happens when the cookbookauthors get food poisoning?
Uh,
not recommended.
One star.
Yeah.
Not recommended.
One star.
Okay.
Like my broken leg from earlierthis year, not recommended one star.
So, uh, we were off for areal a week in real time.
Seriously?
Because Bruce did get Kelo Backer.
Mm-hmm.
(00:43):
And that was a whole.
Problems.
So we missed a week, but now we're back.
And as usual, we've gota one minute cooking dip.
We wanna talk about pickles andwhat makes a pickle a pickle,
and what are the different typesof pickles that exist out there.
We've got three different types, andthey're all represented in our book called
Canning, but more than just cold canning.
These are the three differentkinds of pickles out there.
And then we'll tell you what'smaking us happy in food this week.
(01:06):
So let's get started.
Our one minute cooking tip, it isa common misconception that Chinese
cooking uses soy sauce instead of salt.
It doesn't.
Chinese cooking calls for salta lot of the time because salt
(01:26):
is an enhancer while soy sauce.
Is a flavor.
Yeah.
Now I thi this is a really key point.
Salt isn't an enhancer,but soy sauce is a flavor.
Um, I think that most of uslike the flavor of soy sauce.
Mm-hmm.
But many people think it is just saltywhen of course we all know it's not.
Mm-hmm.
It has a very distinctumami, savory flavor to it.
Mm-hmm.
And different soy sauces havedifferent flavors, different
(01:49):
brands, different ages.
They do.
That's a whole different conversation.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
But, uh, it is true that soy sauce.
Is very salty.
It's, and people often use it onChinese food as if it were salt.
The people, I should say North Americansoften use it as if it were salt.
No,
but it is not interchangeable and yes,it is okay to salt Chinese takeout if
(02:10):
you think it needs salt, but please.
Don't just drown it in soy sauce.
Well, unless you reallylove soy sauce the way I do.
So there you go.
And we should
talk about that sometime too.
You love
to drown rice
in soy sauce.
I do.
You make soup, soy sauce
rice soup.
I do.
And here's a really funny thingabout me as the writer in our team.
I like that.
Cheapest ass soy sauce that you can make.
(02:31):
Keep.
Mark loves
the
kind
that come in, those little tear packetsthey give you in Chinese takeout places.
I do.
It's my childhood.
I listen, you could take the boy outtaDallas, but you can't take Dallas
out of the boy, so there you go.
Uh, I like, I'll
stick to nice aged artisanal soy sauce.
No.
That's ridiculous.
Um, hey, it was your parents fromDallas that bought me and introduced
(02:51):
me to barrel age soy sauce.
So there you
go.
Well, it may have been my parents threw mybrief some suggestions of what to get you.
Okay.
Before we get up to the next andlarge segment of the podcast about
pickles, let's say that we have aFacebook group cooking at Bruce And
Mark, you're welcome to join us thereand tell us your stories about what.
You like and don't like as wellas the kind of pickles you like.
(03:13):
We'll put this episode up there and youcan respond with any kind of pickles that
you like, and in fact, maybe introduceus to pickles that we don't know about.
Mm-hmm.
Please do.
So let's then turn to pickles.
Let's start with thequestion of what are pickles?
What is a
pickle?
Okay, well that's a really complicatedquestion because I think most
(03:34):
people think it's a sour thing.
Mm-hmm.
That it has vinegar attached to it.
Mm-hmm.
But that is actually not thetraditional definition of a pickle.
No.
True pickles, trueoriginal pickles are not.
Sour from vinegar, right?
They are fermented.
That's so's, right?
So they're sour fermentedpickles and they get their
sourness from lacto fermentation.
(03:54):
Yeah, we can talk about that in aminute and what lacto fermentation is.
But basically what happens here is thatyou use salt and water with the vegetable.
You have to be very careful aboutthe level of salt because you can
kill off a certain bacteria, we'lltalk about in a minute, that you
need, once that bacteria gets.
Working.
It begins to slowly ferment thevegetable matter under hand.
(04:17):
Cucumbers, cabbage.
Mm-hmm.
We use turnips, we use radishes,we use apples, we use all
kinds of things for fermenting.
You could pickle almostanything in terms of fermenting.
Now, mark talked about bacteria.
It's important to remember that not.
All bacteria is bad bacteria.
No, of course not.
Not.
It's not all the kindthat I had last week.
(04:38):
Capital bacteria.
It's not all that.
There's some really goodbeneficial bacteria out there.
Some there's many thousands s billions.
Billions of of kinds of your body.
Body is full of good bacteria,which is why it's really healthy to.
Eat lacto fermented foods like sauerkraut.
Let me, lemme stop back.
That's really helpful.
Let me stop back and say, you said yourbody is full of que bacteria, which is
(04:59):
probably true, but the most importantplace where those bacteria live in terms
of your daily life is your gut biome.
Mm-hmm.
It is.
And your gut biome is.
Full of bacteria.
Mostly it's your large intestine that Yes.
That's where the bulkof your bacteria live.
That's correct.
Mm-hmm.
And this really, uh, isnecessary for your health.
Mm-hmm.
So as Bruce says, there is a way in whicheating fermented foods may help your gut.
(05:25):
Mm-hmm.
Biome, the research onthat is a little bit.
Tricky.
Yeah.
It's like taking probiotics.
It's tricky.
It's
tricky
that some people claim when they eatlacto fermented vegetables and they
take probiotics, they feel much better.
They're replenishing good bacteria.
And you are,
and let me say, I take aprobiotic every single day.
I do.
And I do think it makes me feel better.
You, while I know the research isa little sticky here and there's
(05:49):
a. Probably about a 50 50 divideon the effectiveness of this.
Mm-hmm.
I can say at least, even if it's aplacebo effect, taking a probiotic
every day makes me feel better.
Mm-hmm.
So let's talk about that really goodbacteria that ferments vegetables into
pickles, and it is called lactobacillus.
Yeah.
You hear it Lacto fermentation.
(06:10):
Mm-hmm.
Lactobacillus.
And it's a really goodbacteria and it's salt.
Tolerant.
And why is that important to a,
to a degree?
Yes, to a degree.
That's really important because you'regoing to be submerging your vegetables
and a salt brine, so you wanna makesure that the balance of that salt is
correct so the lactobacillus can survive.
(06:30):
That part of the fermentation and start togrow and create the good stuff you want,
right?
Which is gonna give youthis kind of sour flavor.
Now a lot of people think that thesourness, uh, when we talk about
this may be like the whole gross, thecanned sauerkraut of their childhood.
That stuff is disgusting.
There's no lacto should eat it.
No one listen that it's pasteurized.
They might.
(06:51):
Have been, it tastes so awful.
That is not anything like whatsauerkraut actually should taste like.
Sauerkraut.
That is nothing like whatsauerkraut should taste like.
In fact, sauerkraut should be, uh,a beautifully mild sour, slightly
funky, but mostly vegetable.
(07:13):
Taste to the cabbage
and what makes it sour is lactic acid.
And here's how it works, right?
Basically you're submerging thesevegetables in this brine solution and in
our book we give you the exact proportionsand measurements of salt to water to do.
Ooh, I
wanna talk about
that in a minute.
Go.
We will.
So you have this salt waterbrine and you have to make sure
it's salty enough to kill off.
Harmful bacteria, but not too salty.
(07:35):
So the lactobacillus, the goodguys survive and what they do is
they start to convert the lactoseand other sugars present in the
vegetables into lactic acid.
And that lactic acid environment issour and it preserves the vegetables,
giving your pickles their distinctive.
Tangy flavor.
(07:56):
Okay,
so here's what I wanna talkabout, and that is salt.
You would think that saltysalt is salt is salt.
That sodium chloride is sodiumchloride is sodium chloride, and
you would be correct at that.
That salty, salty salt is salt.
However, in writing cold, the canning, wecame upon a rather astounding discovery,
which neither of us really knew.
I think we both knew tointuitively reach for.
(08:17):
Kosher salt.
Mm-hmm.
When pickling and not tablesalt, but I don't think either
of us actually knew why.
And here's why.
You don't wanna reach for table salt whenyou're trying to pull off this maneuver.
It's not that anything will changein the growth of the lactobacillus,
and it's not that necessarilytable salt is bad for pickling.
(08:38):
In fact, you'll probablyget about the same result.
Here's the problem.
Most North American table salt is.
Coated with an anti-icing agentthat doesn't let it cake up in
the box right and clump up overhumidity when it rains it pours.
When it rains it pours as the famousslogan goes, and that anti-icing
agent over time will dissolveand it will cloud the brine.
(09:02):
Now, why is that bad, or whyis that not necessarily good?
Because you wanna be able tosee through the brine to see if
anything is decaying in there.
Mm-hmm.
If you've got the right salt.
Water ratio going because otherwisedecay is, is gonna set in and in
a cloudy brine, it's impossible tosee it even in sauerkraut packed in
a jar, which is a kind of pickle.
(09:23):
So, um, basically what we'retalking here is mm-hmm.
Kosher.
Mm-hmm.
Salt, which is not madethrough a kosher process.
It's not, oh my gosh.
I actually ran into somebody whoclaimed that kosher salt on TikTok,
they claim that kosher salt was made inmines overseen by rabbinical figures.
(09:43):
It is not.
It is the salt.
Used in Kos ring meat.
That is to draw the blood out of meatand it doesn't have any anti aking
in slightly coarser grain usuallythan table salt, although you can
find yeah, finely ground kosher salt.
I want to add to what you justsaid about the cloudy brine.
You know when pickles sit in yourrefrigerator for a long time, they start
(10:05):
to get cloudy anyway, as the vegetablematter breaks down as they get a little
too old, as they get past their prime.
True.
So sometimes that it's hardto know, is it still okay?
Not only can I see it, butnow I don't know why it's.
Cloudy, is it because thosepickles have gone bad?
Because that will happenwhen pickles go bad.
If
you, if you use kosher saltwithout the anti kicking agent.
Mm-hmm.
(10:25):
And the brine in your jar of sauerkraut,pickles, pickle, relish, whatever it is
that you're making, starts to turn cloudy.
That is generally thesign to throw it out.
Yeah.
Better safe than sorry.
Right.
That is absolutely my motto.
It always has been, and after last weekit is even more so that, and wash your
hands every five seconds of your life.
(10:45):
I just like, I'm gonna wash theskin off of my hands, I think at
this point, so you don't have to.
Go over for you.
So ridiculous.
We just came back from a bigCostco run this morning and I
spent an hour cutting up giant,giant slabs of meat and pork belly.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
I must have washed myhands for an hour after
that.
Well, I have to say that, um, we think,we don't know, but I, we think this is
(11:07):
completely off the subject of pickles.
We think that Bruce got, kaob me fromboning out chicken thighs and not.
Washing his hands properly.
And those chicken thighswe did buy from Costco.
Now we don't, we can't prove this.
So we're not saying that youget kalo backer from Costco.
God, no.
No, we're not.
No we're not.
No, we're not.
But I have to say that today Ibought more bone in chicken thighs
and I gingerly brought them to thecart and didn't let Bruce see me
(11:30):
drop them in the cart for fear.
He would say, put that back.
So, but you also brought
me packages of boneless thighs so thatI wouldn't have to bone those out.
But I brought the too, because I
prefer them.
Okay, let's go.
I really don't wanna talkabout Camp of Acters.
So let's go back to pickles.
So in cold canning our book, we havethree different types of pickles
and um, we just kinda wanna explainthis because this is actually the
(11:52):
overarching rubric of how there arethree different kinds of pickles.
Mm-hmm.
So we've been talking.
All this time really about one ofthe three types, and that is the
full room temperature fermentation.
And you can achieve this at home probably.
You remember during the pandemic,millennials were crazed with
making sauerkraut and fermentingthings on their counters.
(12:13):
We were all locked inside and therewas nothing else to do except grow
sourdough and ferment crap in jars.
So there all this sauerkrautcraze that happened.
Um, you can still do that.
And in fact in our book calledCounty, we have a whole set of
sauerkrauts that are small batch.
They make one quart jar and um, theyare indeed room temperature fermented.
(12:35):
Yep.
Bruce just made.
Recipe from that book for
PEs, right?
Yes.
When I made my homemade gefilte fish, andMark had this brilliant idea he said, why
don't you make a jalapeno sauerkraut andwe'll serve that with the gefilte fish?
No.
So I shredded my cabbage and Igot the salt on it in the right
proportions based on the book.
I weighed it.
(12:55):
You must.
Weigh your salt and weigh your vegetables.
There is no way out of this,I'm sorry, in room temperature
ferment.
You have to be so
careful that I, I'm sorry.
If you insist that you must only cookwith measuring spoons and cups, you
will not be successful with sauerkraut.
You might even kill yourself.
I'd be dead, please, if you'regoing to make it, weigh it.
(13:15):
So you weigh it, you let it sit for abit, you massage it, you get all that
liquid coming outta the cabbage and you.
Pack it into the quartjar and you smash it down.
There is actually a sauerkraut pounder,which is a flat ended thing, and you
push it down, you get rid of all theair bubbles, and then you buy these
glass weights that you put on top.
It pushes the cabbage down,makes sure that it is submerged.
(13:39):
Right.
There's a very old saying amongst,uh, people who've done this for years.
And that is, if it's inthe brine, it's fine.
If it's out, throw it out.
Mm-hmm.
So in other words though, thelevel of the liquid has to be
higher than the vegetables.
And then you cover it and youleave it at room temperature.
Now here's the thing.
Lactic acid is going to beproduced, carbon dioxide is
gonna be produced in this.
(13:59):
Yeah.
So pressure is gonna build in that jar.
Yeah.
So you.
Either need to have a lid on that jar thatis made for this where gases can escape.
And I do use these little rubbersealers that have like a nipple
on the top and it lets gas escapethrough that hole in the nipple.
Or you're going to, I'm not gonnasay a word, it's what it is.
Okay.
Whatever.
(14:19):
Or every day you're gonna have to openit, but you might get, it takes a, it
takes a gay man to think gascomes out of a nipple, but Okay.
Go.
Please.
Go on Do go on.
Comes outta mine.
Oh no it doesn't.
And they come in all colors.
I have them in yellow and blue and green.
What, what?
What are we still talking about you?
My
fermentation nipples.
Oh, okay.
And so the, you let them sit and youstart checking it at about three days.
(14:41):
'cause that's often when it'sreally starts to get going.
I come in all colors.
I'm not off that.
I thought we were gonna like get intoyour whole sexual history suddenly.
Okay, go on.
Lots of
colors there.
Do go on and.
Then when it is sour enough for yourtaste, you switch it into the refrigerator
where it could stay for weeks.
It'll still continue toferment a little bit.
That is full roomtemperature fermentation.
(15:02):
Right.
It's kind of like they used to dowhen I was growing up and we would go
to the Lower East side right out ofa scene from like Crossing Delaney,
your mother's favorite movie ever.
It was my mother's favorite movie.
And we would go to Ratner's, thekosher dairy restaurant for Sunday
brunch, and then we would go overto the Pickle Guys and they had
all the pickles and the barrels.
Yes.
Okay.
And that's fermentation.
(15:23):
Yes.
And my grandmother made picklesin this lactose fermentation way.
We didn't use such fancy words.
Did she made, did shecall 'em kosher pickles?
No, she did not.
But we didn't use such fancy words.
But she also fermented those.
She fermented other vegetables towe just all it room temperature?
Yeah, we just called it pickling.
And she didn't haveyour fancy nipple thing?
(15:45):
She had.
Oh, her nipples didn't give off gas.
Uh, well, she had a weight mm-hmm.
That she would put on top of it.
And I have to say that that weightwas, as I recall, made outta
some kind of stone, and then shewas constantly undoing the jars.
The thing with that is you're gonnahave a lot of splatter, right?
Yep.
Because the pressure builds andevery day you're gonna have Yep.
You'll open it and you'll have alot of liquid coming spurting out.
(16:07):
Okay, so
that's, so that's.
All about room temperature fermentation.
Mm-hmm.
There's actually a second way, and thisis what we use a lot in our book called
Canning This Out the Summer, but, but itis something that you can use yourself
and that is called a partial room temp.
And what this involves isbasically not being quite so.
Crazy about the weight of thesalt and the amount of the water.
(16:29):
But you're gonna create a saltwater brinethat you don't have to be exact with, and
then you're gonna submerge, let's say.
Uh, pickling cucumbers in it,and you're gonna leave it on
the counter for 12 to 24 hours.
Mm-hmm.
As long as those cucumbersremain underneath the liquid.
Yes.
They must be submerged.
And what this does is it gives thelactobacillus just a little headstart.
(16:51):
It needs a little kickstart.
Once it blooms even a little, it willkeep blooming in the fridge for a while.
But you, this is a way you can kind of.
Um, make that process more safe.
Yeah.
You should get it in thefridge within 12 to 24 hours.
Yeah.
And it, I love that headstartbecause it's not long enough at room
temperature for anything bad to happen.
(17:12):
No.
But it's just long enough forsomething good to start happening.
And then the third waywe do it is complete.
Refrigerator fermentation.
And we do that with our Kim cheese.
And why do we do that?
Because we're not just adding salt brine,we're adding a lot of other ingredients.
We're adding sugars, we're addingfish sauce, we're adding some funkier
stuff into the mix, and we just,were not comfortable letting these
(17:36):
products sit at room temperature.
And if you leave the kimchi inthe refrigerator long enough,
it will begin to ferment.
Okay.
It just takes longer.
I just have to say, Ihave to stop and say.
Every Korean who would ever listento this podcast is about to freak
out because you're talking aboutrefrigerator fermentation for kimchi and
no one in Korea would do such a thing.
No, never.
(17:57):
Nope.
Ever.
Nope.
So this is a technique that wedevelop to kind of help people make.
A jar of kimchi without the fear mm-hmm.
Of killing yourself.
Mm-hmm.
And then we get sued.
Right.
Well, and all that happens, andespecially the traditional kimchi where
you make a rice porridge and you pullit, pour it over the cabbage with the
(18:17):
hot peppers and all that kind of stuff.
I love
that kimchi.
Right.
That stuff is dangerous in manyways for people who are not home
and not watching it, you know?
Mm-hmm.
I mean, you.
You're not a Korean grandmotherhome watching your pot all day.
So this is a way that you can put itin the fridge and not worry about it.
And we have a whole set of refrigeratorfermented, not only Kim cheese,
(18:38):
but pickles, pickle relishes.
Mm-hmm.
We let a lot of things sit in thefridgerator and it does take long,
it takes, it does 10 to 14 daysfor it to start really working.
Mm-hmm.
Let me also say thatthe book is not limited.
To classically fermented pickles.
We have tons of vinegar, pickles,sweet and sour pickles, you
know, refrigerator, right?
(18:58):
Uh, bread and butter pickles.
And we have all sorts of beets thatare pickled with sugar and vinegar.
So, but
again, that's that weird waythat the word pickle has shifted.
Mm-hmm.
Because sweet and sourpickles are generally not
considered pickles under the.
Old school definition of afermented vegetable, right?
That's just cucumbers soakedin a vinegary sugar brine sauce
(19:22):
stuff with lots of aromatics.
But it is now in the modernworld called a pickle.
And it's called a pickle, right?
And we also have pickle lilies fromboth England and from the US South.
Yeah, those
are like relishes almost.
Those are, yeah.
Right.
Those
verge more, way more over ontorelishes than we have a lot of
Chow Chows and Branston Pickle Yum.
(19:42):
And Branston Pickle.
Right.
. If you don't know what a c cha chowis, you're not from the American South.
It's a cabbage relish.
Uh, allegedly it came out of Chinesecuisine, but that's so not even true.
It doesn't come anywherenear Chinese cuisine.
It's really a southern condiment.
Chow chow.
It's one, it's something actually thatmy grandmother used to make, and I love
(20:04):
Chow Chow more than I can possibly say.
And you can get sweet cabbage chowand you can get super fiery hot.
Chacha, let you guess which one I prefer.
Same
thing like kimchi.
You can get really hot fiery kimchiand you can get less fiery kimchi.
In fact, when we were at Costco thismorning, we did not buy the kimchi there
because, no, there is a woman, markfollows on TikTok, who she's always.
(20:26):
Feeding her Korean parents.
All this food from Costco.
Great.
And I believe like they dothat maybe the kimchi, Costco's
good for non-Korean people.
Yeah.
What they say
is good for Americans,
good for good for Americans, butuh, yeah, I kind of agree too.
So I'll stick to my own.
It's spicier.
It's better.
Yeah.
I like the spicy stuff, but I alsolike, there's a, there are these
summary kimchi that aren't really.
(20:47):
All that fermented at all.
And they're
not even hot.
They're white and they're made withsugar and vinegar and they're almost my
opinion, those delicious summer whiteKim cheese are sort of like the bread
and butter pickles of chorea, sort of.
Um, I hate to make comparisons amongfood cultures like that, but yes.
Sort of, so this is the wholeproblem of pickling mm-hmm.
Is it has become, it's a picklemoved from, yeah, it moved from a
(21:10):
lacto fermentation problem out intothis larger rubric where things
like bread and butter, pickles, and.
Okra pickles and you know, dillybeans are now considered pickles.
Mm-hmm.
Although they're not, those arejust green beans soaked in a vinegar
mixture with lots of aromatics.
Right.
So, but they're good.
It's, it's, we call those pickles, but inthe old school pickling technique mm-hmm.
(21:31):
There are three ways to achieve thisat full room temperature, at a partial
room temperature, or just in therefrigerator, which takes much longer.
, And I wanna end with one little factoid.
Uh, when I was researching putting this,uh, this episode together, did you know
that last year in the Seoul, Korea airportat Inchon Airport, ICN is its code, the,
(21:53):
customs officials there confiscated almost11 tons of kimchi, no wait from carry
on Luggage.
I read this in your notesfor this episode and, um, uh,
okay, so I have many questions.
Oh, confiscated coming in or going out?
Does it matter?
Yes, actually, yes.
I want to know.
Who's confiscating?
What are, is this peoplecom coming into Korea?
(22:14):
Or why would they bringing kimchi?
It's really Kohls to Newcastle.
Why are they bringing kimchi
to Korea?
I bet it was going out.
I bet most of it wasgoing out because Do you
think that people put kimchi intheir luggage to take to their
loved ones around the world
and to take with themselves?
'cause they're not gonnatrust anyone else's kimchi
if they're going on vacation.
No.
No.
I wouldn't either.
(22:35):
Um, so I'm gonna
say going out.
Yeah.
Oh my gosh.
One more thing about kimchi andthen we'll finish, I promise.
If you live near an H Mart Oh.
Which is the giant Koreangrocery store change.
Oh gosh.
Which is is such a fabulous supermarketthen we we're so jealous of you.
Yeah, we are.
But you should go to H Mart and getthe radish kimchi, which is the daon
that's been cubed up and kimchi.
(22:57):
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Turn into a kimchi like product that theradish kimchi is to die for from H Mart.
So
is the chicken Moo.
Which is the daon radish cut inthe cubes and then it is just
in a sweet vinegar solution.
Mm. And it's called ChickenMoo 'cause moo is the Korean.
word for daon radish . And it iswhat is served with fried chicken.
(23:18):
Yeah, there you go.
The radish kimchi and the chicken moo.
Just go to H Mart, mo up downthe aisles and make us jealous.
And you can do that becausewe don't live anywhere near.
An H bar.
Okay.
That's our whole segment on pickles.
We're gonna quit talking aboutit for now and uh, we're gonna
pass on to the last segment.
Let me say before we get there then itwould be great if you could like this
podcast and if you could subscribe toit and if you can write a rating even,
(23:42):
uh, or if you even like good podcasts.
Thanks so much.
'cause we are unsupported andchoose to remain that way.
And it's one of the ways, infact, it is the single way.
You can help support this podcast.
Thanks for that.
Okay, our last segment as is traditional.
What's making us happy in food this week.
Something we got this morning,black lava salt sourdough bagels.
(24:06):
Oh my gosh.
From the Blue House bagelshop in Canton, Connecticut.
We've already talkedabout them too many times.
We've talked, I talked about them.
I've interviewed Leah, the owner, and wepicked up three dozen bagels this morning.
'cause we're going to someone'shouse for dinner tonight and
we didn't know what to bring.
So we decided let's go get thembagels and cream cheese and I'll,
maybe I'll throw a jar of myhomemade marmalade in the bag too.
And that's a lovely house gift, but we.
(24:27):
We got a dozen salt bagels, which theyuse black lava salt, and we shared
one in the car, hot outta the bag.
Yum.
On our way to Costco, on our way toCostco, but we didn't buy the kimchi.
It all wraps up together.
Okay, I guess what's bahe me happy foodthis week is actually a recipe from cold
canning that Bruce made several weeksago, and it is the blackberry conserves.
And if you don't know a conservefrom a preserve, we talked about
(24:49):
it in a previous episode, but aconserve has a lot of aromatics in it.
It's a fruit.
Generally a fruit jam.
I guess tomatoes are fruit, so itis a fruit jam in some way, but
at the same time, it has tons ofaromatics and often nuts in the mix.
Mm-hmm.
So Bruce's Blackberry conserveshas ginger, it has walnuts in it.
I What other spices are in there?
Well, it's
candy ginger, which is so great.
(25:10):
And there's cloves and there'slittle cinnamon, and it's the,
mm. Little less sugar than youwould have in Blackberry Jam.
And it's, it's really good.
Let's
just say it's not good on peanut butter,but it is really, really good on your
preserved meats, like your prosciutto.
Oh, it's great.
On a prosciutto sandwich.
On a sourdough bagel.
Mm-hmm.
Yes, exactly.
(25:31):
So
it's those blackberry conserves thatI think are so unbelievably amazing.
So that's it.
For us this week, lemme remind you thatthere is an Instagram channel cooking
with Bruce and Mark, as well as a TikTokchannel cooking with Bruce and Mark,
and you can actually see us makingvarious recipes, including a blueberry
jam segment that's coming up mm-hmm.
On TikTok and Instagram reels.
(25:51):
If you subscribe to cookingwith Bruce and Mark,
there's also a Facebook groupCooking with Bruce and Mark.
And please go there, go to Facebook, goto cooking with Bruce and Mark, and you
can share with us there what's making youhappy in food this week as we tell you.
What's making us happy in food everyweek here in cooking with Bruce and Mark.
And we want to know what is makingyou happy in food this week.
(26:12):
So share it with us and we'llsee you in the next episode of
cooking with Bruce and Mark.
Hey, I am Bruce Weinstein and this is
the Podcast Cooking with Bruce and Mark.
And I'm Mark Scarborough.
And together with Bruce, we havewritten 36 plus a forthcoming
cookbook called Canning, whichis out in the summer of 2025.
This is our podcastabout food and cooking.
And if you're listening in realtime, we've been off for a week
because, uh, somebody in our team got.
(00:23):
Food poisoning, which is Oh, what fun.
We should make a whole episode about that.
What happens when the cookbookauthors get food poisoning?
Uh,
not recommended.
One star.
Yeah.
Not recommended.
One star.
Okay.
Like my broken leg from earlierthis year, not recommended one star.
So, uh, we were off for areal a week in real time.
Seriously?
Because Bruce did get Kelo Backer.
Mm-hmm.
(00:43):
And that was a whole.
Problems.
So we missed a week, but now we're back.
And as usual, we've gota one minute cooking dip.
We wanna talk about pickles andwhat makes a pickle a pickle,
and what are the different typesof pickles that exist out there.
We've got three different types, andthey're all represented in our book called
Canning, but more than just cold canning.
These are the three differentkinds of pickles out there.
And then we'll tell you what'smaking us happy in food this week.
(01:06):
So let's get started.
Our one minute cooking tip, it isa common misconception that Chinese
cooking uses soy sauce instead of salt.
It doesn't.
Chinese cooking calls for salta lot of the time because salt
(01:26):
is an enhancer while soy sauce.
Is a flavor.
Yeah.
Now I thi this is a really key point.
Salt isn't an enhancer,but soy sauce is a flavor.
Um, I think that most of uslike the flavor of soy sauce.
Mm-hmm.
But many people think it is just saltywhen of course we all know it's not.
Mm-hmm.
It has a very distinctumami, savory flavor to it.
Mm-hmm.
And different soy sauces havedifferent flavors, different
(01:49):
brands, different ages.
They do.
That's a whole different conversation.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
But, uh, it is true that soy sauce.
Is very salty.
It's, and people often use it onChinese food as if it were salt.
The people, I should say North Americansoften use it as if it were salt.
No,
but it is not interchangeable and yes,it is okay to salt Chinese takeout if
(02:10):
you think it needs salt, but please.
Don't just drown it in soy sauce.
Well, unless you reallylove soy sauce the way I do.
So there you go.
And we should
talk about that sometime too.
You love
to drown rice
in soy sauce.
I do.
You make soup, soy sauce
rice soup.
I do.
And here's a really funny thingabout me as the writer in our team.
I like that.
Cheapest ass soy sauce that you can make.
(02:31):
Keep.
Mark loves
the
kind
that come in, those little tear packetsthey give you in Chinese takeout places.
I do.
It's my childhood.
I listen, you could take the boy outtaDallas, but you can't take Dallas
out of the boy, so there you go.
Uh, I like, I'll
stick to nice aged artisanal soy sauce.
No.
That's ridiculous.
Um, hey, it was your parents fromDallas that bought me and introduced
(02:51):
me to barrel age soy sauce.
So there you
go.
Well, it may have been my parents threw mybrief some suggestions of what to get you.
Okay.
Before we get up to the next andlarge segment of the podcast about
pickles, let's say that we have aFacebook group cooking at Bruce And
Mark, you're welcome to join us thereand tell us your stories about what.
You like and don't like as wellas the kind of pickles you like.
(03:13):
We'll put this episode up there and youcan respond with any kind of pickles that
you like, and in fact, maybe introduceus to pickles that we don't know about.
Mm-hmm.
Please do.
So let's then turn to pickles.
Let's start with thequestion of what are pickles?
What is a
pickle?
Okay, well that's a really complicatedquestion because I think most
(03:34):
people think it's a sour thing.
Mm-hmm.
That it has vinegar attached to it.
Mm-hmm.
But that is actually not thetraditional definition of a pickle.
No.
True pickles, trueoriginal pickles are not.
Sour from vinegar, right?
They are fermented.
That's so's, right?
So they're sour fermentedpickles and they get their
sourness from lacto fermentation.
(03:54):
Yeah, we can talk about that in aminute and what lacto fermentation is.
But basically what happens here is thatyou use salt and water with the vegetable.
You have to be very careful aboutthe level of salt because you can
kill off a certain bacteria, we'lltalk about in a minute, that you
need, once that bacteria gets.
Working.
It begins to slowly ferment thevegetable matter under hand.
(04:17):
Cucumbers, cabbage.
Mm-hmm.
We use turnips, we use radishes,we use apples, we use all
kinds of things for fermenting.
You could pickle almostanything in terms of fermenting.
Now, mark talked about bacteria.
It's important to remember that not.
All bacteria is bad bacteria.
No, of course not.
Not.
It's not all the kindthat I had last week.
(04:38):
Capital bacteria.
It's not all that.
There's some really goodbeneficial bacteria out there.
Some there's many thousands s billions.
Billions of of kinds of your body.
Body is full of good bacteria,which is why it's really healthy to.
Eat lacto fermented foods like sauerkraut.
Let me, lemme stop back.
That's really helpful.
Let me stop back and say, you said yourbody is full of que bacteria, which is
(04:59):
probably true, but the most importantplace where those bacteria live in terms
of your daily life is your gut biome.
Mm-hmm.
It is.
And your gut biome is.
Full of bacteria.
Mostly it's your large intestine that Yes.
That's where the bulkof your bacteria live.
That's correct.
Mm-hmm.
And this really, uh, isnecessary for your health.
Mm-hmm.
So as Bruce says, there is a way in whicheating fermented foods may help your gut.
(05:25):
Mm-hmm.
Biome, the research onthat is a little bit.
Tricky.
Yeah.
It's like taking probiotics.
It's tricky.
It's
tricky
that some people claim when they eatlacto fermented vegetables and they
take probiotics, they feel much better.
They're replenishing good bacteria.
And you are,
and let me say, I take aprobiotic every single day.
I do.
And I do think it makes me feel better.
You, while I know the research isa little sticky here and there's
(05:49):
a. Probably about a 50 50 divideon the effectiveness of this.
Mm-hmm.
I can say at least, even if it's aplacebo effect, taking a probiotic
every day makes me feel better.
Mm-hmm.
So let's talk about that really goodbacteria that ferments vegetables into
pickles, and it is called lactobacillus.
Yeah.
You hear it Lacto fermentation.
(06:10):
Mm-hmm.
Lactobacillus.
And it's a really goodbacteria and it's salt.
Tolerant.
And why is that important to a,
to a degree?
Yes, to a degree.
That's really important because you'regoing to be submerging your vegetables
and a salt brine, so you wanna makesure that the balance of that salt is
correct so the lactobacillus can survive.
(06:30):
That part of the fermentation and start togrow and create the good stuff you want,
right?
Which is gonna give youthis kind of sour flavor.
Now a lot of people think that thesourness, uh, when we talk about
this may be like the whole gross, thecanned sauerkraut of their childhood.
That stuff is disgusting.
There's no lacto should eat it.
No one listen that it's pasteurized.
They might.
(06:51):
Have been, it tastes so awful.
That is not anything like whatsauerkraut actually should taste like.
Sauerkraut.
That is nothing like whatsauerkraut should taste like.
In fact, sauerkraut should be, uh,a beautifully mild sour, slightly
funky, but mostly vegetable.
(07:13):
Taste to the cabbage
and what makes it sour is lactic acid.
And here's how it works, right?
Basically you're submerging thesevegetables in this brine solution and in
our book we give you the exact proportionsand measurements of salt to water to do.
Ooh, I
wanna talk about
that in a minute.
Go.
We will.
So you have this salt waterbrine and you have to make sure
it's salty enough to kill off.
Harmful bacteria, but not too salty.
(07:35):
So the lactobacillus, the goodguys survive and what they do is
they start to convert the lactoseand other sugars present in the
vegetables into lactic acid.
And that lactic acid environment issour and it preserves the vegetables,
giving your pickles their distinctive.
Tangy flavor.
(07:56):
Okay,
so here's what I wanna talkabout, and that is salt.
You would think that saltysalt is salt is salt.
That sodium chloride is sodiumchloride is sodium chloride, and
you would be correct at that.
That salty, salty salt is salt.
However, in writing cold, the canning, wecame upon a rather astounding discovery,
which neither of us really knew.
I think we both knew tointuitively reach for.
(08:17):
Kosher salt.
Mm-hmm.
When pickling and not tablesalt, but I don't think either
of us actually knew why.
And here's why.
You don't wanna reach for table salt whenyou're trying to pull off this maneuver.
It's not that anything will changein the growth of the lactobacillus,
and it's not that necessarilytable salt is bad for pickling.
(08:38):
In fact, you'll probablyget about the same result.
Here's the problem.
Most North American table salt is.
Coated with an anti-icing agentthat doesn't let it cake up in
the box right and clump up overhumidity when it rains it pours.
When it rains it pours as the famousslogan goes, and that anti-icing
agent over time will dissolveand it will cloud the brine.
(09:02):
Now, why is that bad, or whyis that not necessarily good?
Because you wanna be able tosee through the brine to see if
anything is decaying in there.
Mm-hmm.
If you've got the right salt.
Water ratio going because otherwisedecay is, is gonna set in and in
a cloudy brine, it's impossible tosee it even in sauerkraut packed in
a jar, which is a kind of pickle.
(09:23):
So, um, basically what we'retalking here is mm-hmm.
Kosher.
Mm-hmm.
Salt, which is not madethrough a kosher process.
It's not, oh my gosh.
I actually ran into somebody whoclaimed that kosher salt on TikTok,
they claim that kosher salt was made inmines overseen by rabbinical figures.
(09:43):
It is not.
It is the salt.
Used in Kos ring meat.
That is to draw the blood out of meatand it doesn't have any anti aking
in slightly coarser grain usuallythan table salt, although you can
find yeah, finely ground kosher salt.
I want to add to what you justsaid about the cloudy brine.
You know when pickles sit in yourrefrigerator for a long time, they start
(10:05):
to get cloudy anyway, as the vegetablematter breaks down as they get a little
too old, as they get past their prime.
True.
So sometimes that it's hardto know, is it still okay?
Not only can I see it, butnow I don't know why it's.
Cloudy, is it because thosepickles have gone bad?
Because that will happenwhen pickles go bad.
If
you, if you use kosher saltwithout the anti kicking agent.
Mm-hmm.
(10:25):
And the brine in your jar of sauerkraut,pickles, pickle, relish, whatever it is
that you're making, starts to turn cloudy.
That is generally thesign to throw it out.
Yeah.
Better safe than sorry.
Right.
That is absolutely my motto.
It always has been, and after last weekit is even more so that, and wash your
hands every five seconds of your life.
(10:45):
I just like, I'm gonna wash theskin off of my hands, I think at
this point, so you don't have to.
Go over for you.
So ridiculous.
We just came back from a bigCostco run this morning and I
spent an hour cutting up giant,giant slabs of meat and pork belly.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
I must have washed myhands for an hour after
that.
Well, I have to say that, um, we think,we don't know, but I, we think this is
(11:07):
completely off the subject of pickles.
We think that Bruce got, kaob me fromboning out chicken thighs and not.
Washing his hands properly.
And those chicken thighswe did buy from Costco.
Now we don't, we can't prove this.
So we're not saying that youget kalo backer from Costco.
God, no.
No, we're not.
No we're not.
No, we're not.
But I have to say that today Ibought more bone in chicken thighs
and I gingerly brought them to thecart and didn't let Bruce see me
(11:30):
drop them in the cart for fear.
He would say, put that back.
So, but you also brought
me packages of boneless thighs so thatI wouldn't have to bone those out.
But I brought the too, because I
prefer them.
Okay, let's go.
I really don't wanna talkabout Camp of Acters.
So let's go back to pickles.
So in cold canning our book, we havethree different types of pickles
and um, we just kinda wanna explainthis because this is actually the
(11:52):
overarching rubric of how there arethree different kinds of pickles.
Mm-hmm.
So we've been talking.
All this time really about one ofthe three types, and that is the
full room temperature fermentation.
And you can achieve this at home probably.
You remember during the pandemic,millennials were crazed with
making sauerkraut and fermentingthings on their counters.
(12:13):
We were all locked inside and therewas nothing else to do except grow
sourdough and ferment crap in jars.
So there all this sauerkrautcraze that happened.
Um, you can still do that.
And in fact in our book calledCounty, we have a whole set of
sauerkrauts that are small batch.
They make one quart jar and um, theyare indeed room temperature fermented.
(12:35):
Yep.
Bruce just made.
Recipe from that book for
PEs, right?
Yes.
When I made my homemade gefilte fish, andMark had this brilliant idea he said, why
don't you make a jalapeno sauerkraut andwe'll serve that with the gefilte fish?
No.
So I shredded my cabbage and Igot the salt on it in the right
proportions based on the book.
I weighed it.
(12:55):
You must.
Weigh your salt and weigh your vegetables.
There is no way out of this,I'm sorry, in room temperature
ferment.
You have to be so
careful that I, I'm sorry.
If you insist that you must only cookwith measuring spoons and cups, you
will not be successful with sauerkraut.
You might even kill yourself.
I'd be dead, please, if you'regoing to make it, weigh it.
(13:15):
So you weigh it, you let it sit for abit, you massage it, you get all that
liquid coming outta the cabbage and you.
Pack it into the quartjar and you smash it down.
There is actually a sauerkraut pounder,which is a flat ended thing, and you
push it down, you get rid of all theair bubbles, and then you buy these
glass weights that you put on top.
It pushes the cabbage down,makes sure that it is submerged.
(13:39):
Right.
There's a very old saying amongst,uh, people who've done this for years.
And that is, if it's inthe brine, it's fine.
If it's out, throw it out.
Mm-hmm.
So in other words though, thelevel of the liquid has to be
higher than the vegetables.
And then you cover it and youleave it at room temperature.
Now here's the thing.
Lactic acid is going to beproduced, carbon dioxide is
gonna be produced in this.
(13:59):
Yeah.
So pressure is gonna build in that jar.
Yeah.
So you.
Either need to have a lid on that jar thatis made for this where gases can escape.
And I do use these little rubbersealers that have like a nipple
on the top and it lets gas escapethrough that hole in the nipple.
Or you're going to, I'm not gonnasay a word, it's what it is.
Okay.
Whatever.
(14:19):
Or every day you're gonna have to openit, but you might get, it takes a, it
takes a gay man to think gascomes out of a nipple, but Okay.
Go.
Please.
Go on Do go on.
Comes outta mine.
Oh no it doesn't.
And they come in all colors.
I have them in yellow and blue and green.
What, what?
What are we still talking about you?
My
fermentation nipples.
Oh, okay.
And so the, you let them sit and youstart checking it at about three days.
(14:41):
'cause that's often when it'sreally starts to get going.
I come in all colors.
I'm not off that.
I thought we were gonna like get intoyour whole sexual history suddenly.
Okay, go on.
Lots of
colors there.
Do go on and.
Then when it is sour enough for yourtaste, you switch it into the refrigerator
where it could stay for weeks.
It'll still continue toferment a little bit.
That is full roomtemperature fermentation.
(15:02):
Right.
It's kind of like they used to dowhen I was growing up and we would go
to the Lower East side right out ofa scene from like Crossing Delaney,
your mother's favorite movie ever.
It was my mother's favorite movie.
And we would go to Ratner's, thekosher dairy restaurant for Sunday
brunch, and then we would go overto the Pickle Guys and they had
all the pickles and the barrels.
Yes.
Okay.
And that's fermentation.
(15:23):
Yes.
And my grandmother made picklesin this lactose fermentation way.
We didn't use such fancy words.
Did she made, did shecall 'em kosher pickles?
No, she did not.
But we didn't use such fancy words.
But she also fermented those.
She fermented other vegetables towe just all it room temperature?
Yeah, we just called it pickling.
And she didn't haveyour fancy nipple thing?
(15:45):
She had.
Oh, her nipples didn't give off gas.
Uh, well, she had a weight mm-hmm.
That she would put on top of it.
And I have to say that that weightwas, as I recall, made outta
some kind of stone, and then shewas constantly undoing the jars.
The thing with that is you're gonnahave a lot of splatter, right?
Yep.
Because the pressure builds andevery day you're gonna have Yep.
You'll open it and you'll have alot of liquid coming spurting out.
(16:07):
Okay, so
that's, so that's.
All about room temperature fermentation.
Mm-hmm.
There's actually a second way, and thisis what we use a lot in our book called
Canning This Out the Summer, but, but itis something that you can use yourself
and that is called a partial room temp.
And what this involves isbasically not being quite so.
Crazy about the weight of thesalt and the amount of the water.
(16:29):
But you're gonna create a saltwater brinethat you don't have to be exact with, and
then you're gonna submerge, let's say.
Uh, pickling cucumbers in it,and you're gonna leave it on
the counter for 12 to 24 hours.
Mm-hmm.
As long as those cucumbersremain underneath the liquid.
Yes.
They must be submerged.
And what this does is it gives thelactobacillus just a little headstart.
(16:51):
It needs a little kickstart.
Once it blooms even a little, it willkeep blooming in the fridge for a while.
But you, this is a way you can kind of.
Um, make that process more safe.
Yeah.
You should get it in thefridge within 12 to 24 hours.
Yeah.
And it, I love that headstartbecause it's not long enough at room
temperature for anything bad to happen.
(17:12):
No.
But it's just long enough forsomething good to start happening.
And then the third waywe do it is complete.
Refrigerator fermentation.
And we do that with our Kim cheese.
And why do we do that?
Because we're not just adding salt brine,we're adding a lot of other ingredients.
We're adding sugars, we're addingfish sauce, we're adding some funkier
stuff into the mix, and we just,were not comfortable letting these
(17:36):
products sit at room temperature.
And if you leave the kimchi inthe refrigerator long enough,
it will begin to ferment.
Okay.
It just takes longer.
I just have to say, Ihave to stop and say.
Every Korean who would ever listento this podcast is about to freak
out because you're talking aboutrefrigerator fermentation for kimchi and
no one in Korea would do such a thing.
No, never.
(17:57):
Nope.
Ever.
Nope.
So this is a technique that wedevelop to kind of help people make.
A jar of kimchi without the fear mm-hmm.
Of killing yourself.
Mm-hmm.
And then we get sued.
Right.
Well, and all that happens, andespecially the traditional kimchi where
you make a rice porridge and you pullit, pour it over the cabbage with the
(18:17):
hot peppers and all that kind of stuff.
I love
that kimchi.
Right.
That stuff is dangerous in manyways for people who are not home
and not watching it, you know?
Mm-hmm.
I mean, you.
You're not a Korean grandmotherhome watching your pot all day.
So this is a way that you can put itin the fridge and not worry about it.
And we have a whole set of refrigeratorfermented, not only Kim cheese,
(18:38):
but pickles, pickle relishes.
Mm-hmm.
We let a lot of things sit in thefridgerator and it does take long,
it takes, it does 10 to 14 daysfor it to start really working.
Mm-hmm.
Let me also say thatthe book is not limited.
To classically fermented pickles.
We have tons of vinegar, pickles,sweet and sour pickles, you
know, refrigerator, right?
(18:58):
Uh, bread and butter pickles.
And we have all sorts of beets thatare pickled with sugar and vinegar.
So, but
again, that's that weird waythat the word pickle has shifted.
Mm-hmm.
Because sweet and sourpickles are generally not
considered pickles under the.
Old school definition of afermented vegetable, right?
That's just cucumbers soakedin a vinegary sugar brine sauce
(19:22):
stuff with lots of aromatics.
But it is now in the modernworld called a pickle.
And it's called a pickle, right?
And we also have pickle lilies fromboth England and from the US South.
Yeah, those
are like relishes almost.
Those are, yeah.
Right.
Those
verge more, way more over ontorelishes than we have a lot of
Chow Chows and Branston Pickle Yum.
(19:42):
And Branston Pickle.
Right.
. If you don't know what a c cha chowis, you're not from the American South.
It's a cabbage relish.
Uh, allegedly it came out of Chinesecuisine, but that's so not even true.
It doesn't come anywherenear Chinese cuisine.
It's really a southern condiment.
Chow chow.
It's one, it's something actually thatmy grandmother used to make, and I love
(20:04):
Chow Chow more than I can possibly say.
And you can get sweet cabbage chowand you can get super fiery hot.
Chacha, let you guess which one I prefer.
Same
thing like kimchi.
You can get really hot fiery kimchiand you can get less fiery kimchi.
In fact, when we were at Costco thismorning, we did not buy the kimchi there
because, no, there is a woman, markfollows on TikTok, who she's always.
(20:26):
Feeding her Korean parents.
All this food from Costco.
Great.
And I believe like they dothat maybe the kimchi, Costco's
good for non-Korean people.
Yeah.
What they say
is good for Americans,
good for good for Americans, butuh, yeah, I kind of agree too.
So I'll stick to my own.
It's spicier.
It's better.
Yeah.
I like the spicy stuff, but I alsolike, there's a, there are these
summary kimchi that aren't really.
(20:47):
All that fermented at all.
And they're
not even hot.
They're white and they're made withsugar and vinegar and they're almost my
opinion, those delicious summer whiteKim cheese are sort of like the bread
and butter pickles of chorea, sort of.
Um, I hate to make comparisons amongfood cultures like that, but yes.
Sort of, so this is the wholeproblem of pickling mm-hmm.
Is it has become, it's a picklemoved from, yeah, it moved from a
(21:10):
lacto fermentation problem out intothis larger rubric where things
like bread and butter, pickles, and.
Okra pickles and you know, dillybeans are now considered pickles.
Mm-hmm.
Although they're not, those arejust green beans soaked in a vinegar
mixture with lots of aromatics.
Right.
So, but they're good.
It's, it's, we call those pickles, but inthe old school pickling technique mm-hmm.
(21:31):
There are three ways to achieve thisat full room temperature, at a partial
room temperature, or just in therefrigerator, which takes much longer.
, And I wanna end with one little factoid.
Uh, when I was researching putting this,uh, this episode together, did you know
that last year in the Seoul, Korea airportat Inchon Airport, ICN is its code, the,
(21:53):
customs officials there confiscated almost11 tons of kimchi, no wait from carry
on Luggage.
I read this in your notesfor this episode and, um, uh,
okay, so I have many questions.
Oh, confiscated coming in or going out?
Does it matter?
Yes, actually, yes.
I want to know.
Who's confiscating?
What are, is this peoplecom coming into Korea?
(22:14):
Or why would they bringing kimchi?
It's really Kohls to Newcastle.
Why are they bringing kimchi
to Korea?
I bet it was going out.
I bet most of it wasgoing out because Do you
think that people put kimchi intheir luggage to take to their
loved ones around the world
and to take with themselves?
'cause they're not gonnatrust anyone else's kimchi
if they're going on vacation.
No.
No.
I wouldn't either.
(22:35):
Um, so I'm gonna
say going out.
Yeah.
Oh my gosh.
One more thing about kimchi andthen we'll finish, I promise.
If you live near an H Mart Oh.
Which is the giant Koreangrocery store change.
Oh gosh.
Which is is such a fabulous supermarketthen we we're so jealous of you.
Yeah, we are.
But you should go to H Mart and getthe radish kimchi, which is the daon
that's been cubed up and kimchi.
(22:57):
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Turn into a kimchi like product that theradish kimchi is to die for from H Mart.
So
is the chicken Moo.
Which is the daon radish cut inthe cubes and then it is just
in a sweet vinegar solution.
Mm. And it's called ChickenMoo 'cause moo is the Korean.
word for daon radish . And it iswhat is served with fried chicken.
(23:18):
Yeah, there you go.
The radish kimchi and the chicken moo.
Just go to H Mart, mo up downthe aisles and make us jealous.
And you can do that becausewe don't live anywhere near.
An H bar.
Okay.
That's our whole segment on pickles.
We're gonna quit talking aboutit for now and uh, we're gonna
pass on to the last segment.
Let me say before we get there then itwould be great if you could like this
podcast and if you could subscribe toit and if you can write a rating even,
(23:42):
uh, or if you even like good podcasts.
Thanks so much.
'cause we are unsupported andchoose to remain that way.
And it's one of the ways, infact, it is the single way.
You can help support this podcast.
Thanks for that.
Okay, our last segment as is traditional.
What's making us happy in food this week.
Something we got this morning,black lava salt sourdough bagels.
(24:06):
Oh my gosh.
From the Blue House bagelshop in Canton, Connecticut.
We've already talkedabout them too many times.
We've talked, I talked about them.
I've interviewed Leah, the owner, and wepicked up three dozen bagels this morning.
'cause we're going to someone'shouse for dinner tonight and
we didn't know what to bring.
So we decided let's go get thembagels and cream cheese and I'll,
maybe I'll throw a jar of myhomemade marmalade in the bag too.
And that's a lovely house gift, but we.
(24:27):
We got a dozen salt bagels, which theyuse black lava salt, and we shared
one in the car, hot outta the bag.
Yum.
On our way to Costco, on our way toCostco, but we didn't buy the kimchi.
It all wraps up together.
Okay, I guess what's bahe me happy foodthis week is actually a recipe from cold
canning that Bruce made several weeksago, and it is the blackberry conserves.
And if you don't know a conservefrom a preserve, we talked about
(24:49):
it in a previous episode, but aconserve has a lot of aromatics in it.
It's a fruit.
Generally a fruit jam.
I guess tomatoes are fruit, so itis a fruit jam in some way, but
at the same time, it has tons ofaromatics and often nuts in the mix.
Mm-hmm.
So Bruce's Blackberry conserveshas ginger, it has walnuts in it.
I What other spices are in there?
Well, it's
candy ginger, which is so great.
(25:10):
And there's cloves and there'slittle cinnamon, and it's the,
mm. Little less sugar than youwould have in Blackberry Jam.
And it's, it's really good.
Let's
just say it's not good on peanut butter,but it is really, really good on your
preserved meats, like your prosciutto.
Oh, it's great.
On a prosciutto sandwich.
On a sourdough bagel.
Mm-hmm.
Yes, exactly.
(25:31):
So
it's those blackberry conserves thatI think are so unbelievably amazing.
So that's it.
For us this week, lemme remind you thatthere is an Instagram channel cooking
with Bruce and Mark, as well as a TikTokchannel cooking with Bruce and Mark,
and you can actually see us makingvarious recipes, including a blueberry
jam segment that's coming up mm-hmm.
On TikTok and Instagram reels.
(25:51):
If you subscribe to cookingwith Bruce and Mark,
there's also a Facebook groupCooking with Bruce and Mark.
And please go there, go to Facebook, goto cooking with Bruce and Mark, and you
can share with us there what's making youhappy in food this week as we tell you.
What's making us happy in food everyweek here in cooking with Bruce and Mark.
And we want to know what is makingyou happy in food this week.
(26:12):
So share it with us and we'llsee you in the next episode of
cooking with Bruce and Mark.
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