Fermenting Pickles

Fermenting Pickles

How to Ferment Cucumbers

If you like dill pickles, you love this recipe. This episode of Back to the Homestead starts out with a short demo of what wild fires in Southwestern Idaho can look like...a small one...but nonetheless a wild fire (as seen from the homestead).

Then we discuss how to ferment cucumbers by using lacto fermentation. We'll take the fermentation process from harvesting from the garden to the week after the process has started and the taste test.

Recipe:

Small and medium cucumbers with no blemishes
Peppers (Mild, Medium or Hot)
Garlic
Dill (or Dill Seed)
Brine

Brine: 1 gallon of water to 12 tablespoons (not teaspoons) of sea salt (or kosher salt).

Dutch Oven Cooking

Back to the Homestead

Happy Mother's Day and Cooking in a Dutch Oven

It's finally getting warm enough to get the plants and seeds in the ground. I know many of you already are seeing tomatoes on your plants and here we are just now putting them in the ground. Here in southwestern Idaho, we're right on time (well, maybe a little early with our fingers crossed).

We did more Mother's Day celebrating than gardening this weekend on the homestead. We decided we'd take a trip up to Idaho City, Idaho and drive a short ways up the Ponderosa Pine Scenic Byway (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idaho_State_Highway_21) and find a spot to cook a picnic in a Dutch Oven. It's good to take a moment for the mammas in our lives (we should do it way more than just the one day a year in May).

If you are wondering about the recipe for the Dutch Oven Pizza we cooked:

Campfire Dutch Oven Pizza

1 1/2	lbs. lean ground beef	1/2	medium red onion; diced
2	tsp. italian seasoning	3	Tbs. diced greeen bell pepper
1	tsp. garlic powder	3	Tbs. diced red bell pepper
	salt and black pepper to taste	1	(8 oz.) can mushroom stems & pieces; drained
2	Tbs. olive oil	12	black olives; sliced
1	can crescent rolls	8	oz. shredded Cheddar cheese
1	jar pizza sauce	8	oz. shredded Mozzarella cheese

Heat a 12" Dutch oven using 18-20 briquettes bottom until hot. In a medium bowl add ground beef, italian seasoning, garlic powder, salt and pepper; mix together with your hands. Drop ground beef by small pieces into the hot Dutch oven and fry until brown. Remove browned beef from Dutch oven and wipe oven down with a paper towel. Pour olive oil into Dutch oven and spread evenly over bottom of oven. Unroll the can of crescent rolls and line the bottom of the oven with a layer of flattened rolls. Spoon pizza sauce evenly over crescent rolls. Sprinkle evenly with seasoned ground beef, red onion, bell peppers, mushrooms, olives, and top with Cheddar and Mozarella cheeses. Cover and bake using 8-10 briquettes bottom and 16-18 briquettes top for 20-30 minutes until crust is browned on edges and cheese is bubbly. Serves: 6-8 This recipe was taken from one of my favorite web sites: http://papadutch.home.comcast.net/~papadutch/dutch-oven-recipes.htm