Summer is essentially over and apart from making the usual tomato sauce, I love making pickles. Once you get the hang of it and find the right balance of salt that suits your tastebuds you won’t be able to eat any store-bought ones. I learned that the hard way!

Cucumbers

Now this one is a true classic. All you need are cucumbers that have a significant shape to them. Their availability usually depends on the climate you live in. In Istanbul, where vegetables arrive from all over Turkey, you can see them in stalls as early as September, but for example, in the more rural areas, you may not be able to get your hands on them until later. This might throw your plans off for making the pickles but getting locally grown cucumbers is always better than those that may have traveled thousands of kilometers.

And as we are on the topic of cucumbers: You don’t need to have that exact type of cucumbers to make your pickles. The "smooth" kinds work just as well and the taste is almost completely the same. So in case you don’t want to wait for the other kind of cucumber you can at the very least have a test run with those.

An important factor is your city or country's climate. As you know Turkey is quite hot compared to for example Germany or Poland in northern Europe. In such cold climates, you can get away with less salt than in warmer countries like Turkey. The recipe I’ll be sharing with you is optimized for here. I prefer to keep the pickles in a dark and cool spot but I avoid keeping them in the fridge before opening them as it defeats the purpose of pickling them.

Or so it feels to me at least.

One last note before the recipe: You’ll need rock salt, not your regular iodized table salt!

Ingredients