Viet Nam-Style Pickle Recipe: Easy, Tasty and Nutritious!

Good afternoon my dear friends. Can you believe how fast time flies? It's the weekend again 😀 Today I noticed my pickles collection is running low, I am out of cucumber one. So, it's time to make another batch. Honestly, there are always some kind of pickles in my house 😂

It might sound a bit crazy but I just love pickles so much, all kinds of pickles. It's not just about the sour, refreshing taste that they bring to every dish or cut through fatty flavors. Pickles are also packed with health benefits.

Today let’s make some pickled cucumbers with me. Easy to make.

Ingredients:

• Cucumbers
• Garlic
• Salt, black pepper
• Sugar
• Vinegar ( optional, I will explain later)
• Fresh dill (I love it, but I ran out this time)

How to make it:

Step 1: Clean the cucumber well with some salt, then rinse and dry them thoroughly. I like placing them in a basket with holes to help them dry faster or you can just put it in the sun for a while to make sure no more moisture.

Step 2: Prepare a pot with 1.5 liters of water, add 2 spoons of salt and 2 spoons of sugar in the pot and heat it until it boils. And this is a note for you, if you want the pickles to be fermented naturally, that’s enough. But they take more time to be fermented so some people if they don’t have time they will use some vinegar to make it ferment quicker, less time to wait.

However if you use vinegar, there won’t be probiotics from the pickles. So for me, I prefer the naturally fermented one without using the vinegar, cause I want to get probiotics from them. However, with vinegar doesn’t mean it is not good, they still have other health benefits like rich in antioxidants, low in calories,.. just not with probiotics which you can have probiotics from yogurts and other sources.

Step 3: While you are waiting for the water boils, prepare some garlic and slide it

Step 4: Make sure the water is totally cool down like room temperature. Place the cucumbers and garlic in the glass jar. Add some black pepper for extra aroma, and yes dill to make it even better but I don’t have any today. Another note for you that you should use the glass for any pickling process.

Now pour the water with salt and sugar in, make sure it covers all the cucumbers and garlic.

Alright now we are almost done, just cover the jar and leave it at room temperature for 2-3 days to ferment naturally.

When it turns like this color, a bit green-yellow, it’s ready to use. And remember to keep it in the fridge to slow down fermentation and keep them fresh for weeks.

So, we ‘ve done the pickled cucumber and I want to introduce you my pickles collection with shallot, garlic and cabbage pickles.

I use pickles for most of my meals. This is one of them, eating instant noodles with a pickled cucumber.

That’s it for today. A lot of sour, a lot of love, hehe. Hope you like them and maybe inspire you to make some pickles 🙂

See you in my next posts :))

All the photos were taken by me in my lovely kitchen!