 Greetings friends. This is Survival Doc. Today we are going to ferment some vegetables using a brine solution. In particular, we're going to ferment some cucumbers today to make some pickles. Now, these pickles will not contain any vinegar like some pickles do. They will be fermented entirely in salt water brine solution. I'm starting with four and a half pounds of small fresh cucumbers. Now normally I will ferment my cucumbers in a crock. Like this one, this crock right here will hold about a pound and a half of these cucumbers. So it's too small. This crock right here is also too small because I have to have the solution of salt water higher than the cucumbers. So this crock will not hold this many cucumbers. So today, until I can get myself a larger crock and I do have a friend of mine who is making me some larger crocks. But until I get my larger crocks today I'm going to ferment my cucumbers in a food grade plastic bucket. The first thing I'm going to do is make my brine solution. What you want to use is sea salt or mineral salt. And the formula I'm going to use is one quarter cup of salt per quart of water. This is a two-cup container here. So I'm going to use a half a cup of salt. I'm going to add slightly warm water. The warm water will facilitate the dissolving of the salt. And you don't want to pour hot water over the food that you're fermenting because you want the food to remain raw and you certainly don't want to cook it at all. So I'm just using warm water to help dissolve the salt. Then what I'll do is I'll finish adding regular water, red ring temperature water to this. So that by the time I pour the brine solution over the vegetables, the brine will be the correct temperature. Okay, I've added regular filth dirt purified water and so my brine solution is at room temperature now. Okay, I've put my four and a half pounds of cucumbers in this plastic bucket. First thing I want to add is the starter. Now this right here is from my last batch of cucumbers and as you can see the cucumbers are gone. They went quite quickly. I saved this water in here, this brine solution in here to use as a starter because this solution has the beneficial bacteria in it that we will need for the fermentation process. Now if you don't have a starter, they say that vegetables naturally contain the bacteria on them and you don't even have to have a starter. I think you will have better results if you do use a starter. You can also use a starter like this. You can't use your typical product because the typical product has been canned, is sterilized. The canning process involves sterilization and sterilization of course kills all the beneficial bacteria. This is a special sauerkraut I got from Whole Foods Market that was stored in the refrigerator because it has not been canned and it contains live cultures. Alright, so you want to make sure that you use a starter that has live cultures. So I could also use this and just for good measure I pour a little of this in there too. It's not necessary at all but it won't hurt anything. Today I'm going to do something a little bit different. I'm going to attempt to make sweet pickles and I don't want to use sugar because that's not very healthy. I have here some stevia herb which is herb that I grew in my own garden this year and I dehydrated it. I'm going to make a tea, a real strong sweet tea from my stevia herbs. Here are some fresh sprigs of stevia just about to go to flower here. I'm going to add that too just for kicks and giggles and for decoration. The first thing I'm going to do is just make a strong tea of stevia and you can do this according to your taste. One thing about stevia, stevia is a lot stronger than sugar. It's a lot sweeter I mean than sugar. Alright, so you don't want to use too much of it. If you use too much stevia you can get the stevia aftertaste. Generally if you don't use too much you do not get that aftertaste. I like the aftertaste myself but some people don't like the taste of stevia. That's a lot of stevia right there. Last time I made these sweet pickles they weren't quite sweet enough for me. I've got quite a few more pickles here so this time I'm going to use more stevia. Here's some hot water. I'm going to steep these stevia leaves for a while. Then press it down and add the water to my brine solution and then I'll add the fresh sprigs for decoration as well. And you can spice up your pickles according to your preferences. You can find recipes for different pickle spices online. I don't generally use recipes. I just kind of go by experience and taste. What I'm going to do here is I'm going to add some fresh ginger. About this much ginger for the pickles that I have there. I'm going to slice this into slices like this and I'll put these slices in there just like this. I put those in my cucumbers. This is a turmeric. Same thing here. Fresh turmeric root. Slice this up. Put that in there just like that. I'll put about a tablespoon of cloves maybe for these. Maybe I've got a lot of pickles here. Maybe a little bit more than a tablespoon. A little bit too much. There's plenty of cloves in there. I'm putting fennel in there. About a tablespoon of fennel too. So these are the spices along with the stevia that I'm going to use in this batch of pickles. In goes the stevia. You know I decided I'm not going to strain the stevia leaves. I'm just going to put them all in there like that. I like fermented stevia leaves. The fresh sprigs of stevia. I want to make sure I get all the minerals in there. Now you don't want any food floating on the surface during the fermentation process. It can give it off flavors. So what I need to do is make sure there's enough fluid in here to completely cover. As a matter of fact I might put a little bit more in there. Maybe not. Might be enough. But I'm going to need to hold this down. And the way that I do that is I put something on top. I like to use leaves from my garden. In particular fig leaves. One of my favorites. I put a layer of fig leaves on top and then put a rock on top to weigh it down. And then we begin the first phase of the fermentation process. Here's some fig leaves right out of my garden. I like to place a nice layer of fig leaves. Sometimes I use grape leaves, whatever's around. Wild grape leaves, zucchini leaves, any large leaves from an edible plant. And what I like to do is make a nice layer of the leaves and then weigh them down with the rock. And if you look something like that. You just want to make sure that all the food is held below the solution of brine. What I actually will do here is I'll go ahead and mix up some more brine and bring this up a little bit higher. I actually like to use a lot more fig leaves than this. The problem is I have the fig trees that I have. The two fig trees are just planted to them this year. They're very young trees. I don't want to butcher them up too much. I've already stolen some leaves from them to make some other fermented products. So rather than strip my trees of all their leaves, I'm going to cheat here. Put a couple of these stainless steel trivet things down which came with my pressure cooker. Put the rock on top of that. And again, I'll add a little bit more, maybe not. That's about the right amount. Add a little bit more brine, maybe. Because I'll be skimming some of this off. And then from here, we just let this ferment. I'll just cover this with a cloth. Let this ferment for a few days. As it's fermenting, there'll be a scum that collects on the top. And every day, once a day, I'll just skim off the scum. Because the scum, if you leave it on there, it's not going to hurt anything. It will give it some off flavor so you want to skim off the scum. Make sure your food stays below. You don't want any of your food up above the water level. Okay, about another quart of the brine solution. And now I'll be skimming a lot of this liquid off when I skim the scum off. So by starting with a lot, I won't have to add a lot more salt water to it. But if it does, the level gets too low, then I will go ahead and add some more brine solution in order to keep the brine above the food level. And that's pretty much it from here. We just let the bacteria do its work. Then we'll put it in jars and put it in the cool storage in the root cellar or just in a cool, dark place and eat it as we need it. So once a day, you just open your crocs and you just skim the scum off the top. And you're not going to get it all. So just kind of get the big nasties. Alright, you don't want your food floating on the top because some scum forms on the food and gives it all flavors. So any food that I see floating up the top, I just go ahead and scoop up with the scum. Alright, so notice the water levels a little low here. What I'll do is I'll go ahead and just top it off with plain water. There's enough salt in there. I'll pack them in here and do the same thing. Put up like a leaf or one rock, whatever it takes to hold the vegetables down below the level. Make sure that it's topped up. The water level is topped up. And these jars are supposed to leak a little bit of pressure. It builds up too much. That's what these are for. They help the air escape. And then what I do is I come along. I watch these on my countertop after I pack them in there. And every day I come by and do what's called burping. Your jar, you just open it. Bubbles will rise in there. Bubbles stop rising. And you hear a gush of air. When you open it, there's a gush of air, bubbles that stops bubbling. Lock it back down. And as long as those bubbles are occurring, you know, it's still fermenting. You might have to scrape a little scum off the top while this is going on. But when you're doing this and there's no pressure and there's no bubbles, then it's done. Scrape off any scum. Top it off. And put those in your cold storage or your refrigerator ready to eat, whichever you prefer. Okay, let's see if this jar might be the right size. Yep, I think this jar might do it for starters. Pour the brine in there. Okay, and what I'll do now is I'll leave this sitting on the countertop. And each day I'll come by and I'll burp it, see if the pressure is built up. Normally if it's still fermenting, when I burp it, when I open it up, some air rushes out and you see some bubbles rushing up. Then I close it back down and let it sit there again and do that every day until it stops burping and bubbling. And then I can put it in storage. Okay, let's see. Maybe the rest of them will fit in this jar here. Here are the pickles that I did. And they're a little cloudy right now, that'll settle down. They'll be more clear. But I just love this preservation technique, mainly because it just is full of beneficial bacteria, which will help your intestinal tract. And our intestinal tracts are under such an assault these days with GMOs and pesticides, residual pesticides on our foods, and aluminum from chem trails, and who knows what else. So our intestinal tracts are under attack, and this is the way you protect your intestinal tract. Your intestinal tract is as healthy as your bacterial count, beneficial bacterial count in your intestinal tract. Eat lots of fermented foods and you'll be healthy. This is Survival Doc reminding you to be prepared or be prepared to be fleeced.