Pickles are almost always on the menu at Bar Tartine, the San Francisco restaurant helmed by co-chefs Nicolaus Balla and Cortney Burns. In their new book Bar Tartine: Techniques & Recipes (available next week!), the team shares some of the natural processing that goes on in their project kitchen, including making pickles year-round out of the ingredients they get from local farmers: carrots, peppers, green beans, mustard greens and many more.
They use two methods for pickling: vinegar brine, a familiar method that involves preserving foods in vinegar; and salt brine, in which vegetables are soured naturally by lactic acid fermentation. The latter process uses only salt and water to preserve, resulting in a flavorful, nutritious pickles rich in probiotics.
Here, we ask Nick and Cortney all about their pickling process at the restaurant and how we can use their new book to get started at home. Read on, then try recipes from the new cookbook below!
Why do you ferment fruits and vegetables? What are the benefits?
Nick: More complex flavors come out of processing food naturally versus the sterile, refined flavors you get from food that doesn’t have living organisms. Like sauerkraut. We build a lot of flavors our of the notion of agrodolce — sweet, sour and salty all together. Those flavors are based on lactic acid fermentation, giving foods another element of sour that rounds out other flavors. It creates a lot of other compounds and aromas that you don’t get from products that are not fermented. Also, homemade spices just taste better when you process them from local ingredients at the peak of the season. There is no way to get a fresher spice than from drying it in house. Also, there’s a connection to the area that’s unique. Process locally, and your food tastes local.
Cortney: Fermenting also allows us to have things year-round that we may not be able to have otherwise. Like fermented brussels sprouts, which we’re using in the summer — we wouldn’t be able to do that otherwise. It gives our seasons longer life spans.
How is pickling foods in brine different from vinegar pickling?
Nick: Vinegar is a fermented medium. We like vinegar pickles made from unpasteurized vinegar. But vinegar pickles usually call for insane amounts of sugar — and once you get into sugar and pasteurized vinegar, then you’re just sterilizing. The sugar and the killing everything is the big difference between the way we vinegar pickle now versus the way it used to be.
Cortney: And you’re not getting nearly the nutritional benefits. Even if you’re using live vinegar, they are different acid bases and have different nutritional content.
Nick: We like vinegar pickles. There’s a recipe in the book for pepper pickles — there’s always room for that. We’re not saying it’s bad, but it’s good to have balance. Why not process and preserve naturally? Why add all the sugar and kill everything all the time?
How does brine pickling work? Walk us through the process.
Nick: Basically, adding salt to ingredients prevents harmful bacteria for growing and allows lactic acid bacteria to proliferate. It lowers the pH of the medium you’re pickling, acidifying it and making it more delicious. By the time your pickles are sour they are completely protected from anything getting in that could be harmful. People don’t get sick from brine pickles.
Cortney: There’s not a single reported case.
Nick: People have this inherent fear of eating living things, but it’s safe — safer than eating lettuce.
What tools do you need to do it at home?
Nick: For brine pickling you just need the appropriate vessel and salt. It can be just about anything; we prefer glass or ceramic, because they are nonreactive. Cheesecloth is handy to have to cover things.
Cortney: And plates or something to submerge the ingredients in the liquid. Even a bag with water in it.
Nick: You probably have everything you need in your house to start.
What do you pickle in the Bar Tartine kitchen? What ingredients are best for brine pickling?
Nick: Carrots are great because they’re so abundant and forgiving, and they keep their crunch really well. They have readily available sugars. Green tomatoes are abundant and also keep their texture.
Cortney: Whole beets are my favorites. Also cabbage, whole and grated or shredded. Ramps, garlic chives, mustard greens.
Nick: Cauliflower does really well. Lettuce is great. But brassicas can get really sulfuric with an intense aroma.
Any tips for people starting out?
Cortney: If your kitchen stinks, it’s fine. Just watch it for mold if you don’t have an airlocked system.
Nick: It usually will develop white mold. Just scrape it off — it’s harmless. Don’t be scared.
How do you use pickled and fermented foods in your menu?
Cortney: Right now, we have fermented green beans in our beef tartare, acting as capers. We use them in soups. We put fermented ramps in mayonnaise and black garlic in sauces. Preserved lemons are used in all sorts of things.
Nick: We’re using pickled squash, pureed as a dip for bread and mixed with sunchoke oil in place of butter — it’s a sweet and sour bread that’s been really popular. We’re adding around vegetables to broth, like our sauerkraut soup. There’s no limit. Any pickled vegetable can be used in the right application.
What are some ways for people to use them at home?
Cortney: In soups and stews — they can be used as more than just a condiment. That’s something we try to get across in the book: they are meant to be cooked into things sometimes. Make a mayonnaise and add some of the brine.
Nick: All of them can be used in salads. The easiest way is to take a sour pickle brine and olive oil, chop vegetables, and throw whatever you like in there: avocados, sprouts, tomatoes, meat, or make a hot salad with fermented green beans and blue cheese and chicken. It’s insane. Add fermented green beans into potato salad — you can use them in anything in place of capers or olives.
Overgrown Garden Pickles
Turn to this recipe in late summer when your garden goes into overdrive or when there is a deal on the ugly but delicious vegetables at the farmers’ market. It’s a simple technique that can be used for almost any vegetable, resulting in a glut of pickles to enjoy well into the winter months.
Makes 3 gl/11.5 L
Enough whole vegetables, such as cucumbers (flower ends removed), summer squash, onions, carrots, beets, green tomatoes, green beans, and/or sunchokes, to fill a 3-gl/11.5-L container
2 cups/280 g kosher salt
8 qt/7.5 L water
8 garlic cloves
4 shallots, peeled
5 serrano or jalapeño chiles, or any hot chiles from the garden, stemmed
2 bunches fresh dill
Fresh herbs sprigs, such as basil, tarragon, parsley, or marjoram, for garnish
Fennel oil or extra-virgin olive oil for garnish
Put all of the vegetables in a 3-gl/11.5-L nonreactive container. In a separate nonreactive container, dissolve the salt in the water to make a brine. Transfer about 2 cups/480 ml of the brine to a blender; add the garlic, shallots, and chiles; and process on high speed until homogenized. Pour the puree into the remaining salt brine and stir to mix well. Add the dill bunches to the vegetables, then pour the brine over them. Top the vegetables with a weight to keep them submerged in the brine. Seal the container, using a lid with an airlock, if you have one. If you have sealed it without an airlock, open the container every few days or so to release carbon dioxide buildup, and check for mold. Place in a clean, well-protected, low-light area with an ambient temperature of 60° to 68°F/16° to 20°C until the pickles taste sour, about 1 month. Refrigerate for up to 1 year.
To serve, slice the pickles into bite-size pieces and return them to the brine. Refrigerate until serving, for up to 1 year. We like to garnish these pickles with torn garden herbs and fennel oil.
Sauerkraut
At Bar Tartine, we process truckloads of cabbage each year. Each batch of sauerkraut starts with about 300 lb/135 kg of cabbage, which take two people one evening to clean, shred, pound, and pack into buckets, and another couple of months to sour to the point that we like to serve it.
Some batches are soured with caraway and juniper berries. Sometimes we grate in fresh wasabi grown in Half Moon Bay, California, for a spicy condiment. Several times every year we make a batch of red-cabbage kraut, adding locally grown young ginger. Save the outer leaves from the cabbage to brine and use with charred pepper paste.
Makes 1 qt/740 g
7 tbsp/60 g kosher salt
5 lb/2.3 kg cabbage, cored and thinly sliced crosswise
In a large bowl, massage the salt into the cabbage. Pack the cabbage into a crock or nonreactive jar. It may take several hours for the cabbage to release enough liquid to submerge the solids. When the liquid nears the top of the cabbage, top with a weight to keep it submerged in brine. (Some cabbage contains more moisture than others; dryer cabbage may not expel enough liquid to cover the top. In this case add a bit of brine—1 tbsp kosher salt per 1 cup/240 ml water.) Seal the container, using a lid with an airlock, if you have one. If you have sealed it without an airlock, open the container every few days or so to release carbon dioxide buildup, and check for mold. Place in a clean, well-protected, low-light area with an ambient temperature of 60° to 68°F/16°C to 20°C until the cabbage tastes quite sour, about 1 month.
It is up to you as to when you move the cabbage to the refrigerator, which will slow the souring and keep the cabbage crunchier. We often let it sour for more than 2 months before serving. Pack the sauerkraut into jars with lids and refrigerate for up to 1 year.