Kathy, i’m sure your pickles will be fine. the dull green color means your brine is becoming acidic, which is good. the only thing you really need to worry about is funky mold on surface.

As for brine times, that’s a great thing to add. 5% is fairly low and a chicken can take 24 hours in it. I usually just brine by intuition. a one inch pork chop, 2 to 3 hours is fine. If you’re really concerned, use a 2.5% to 3% brine and I’m guessing you could brine indefinitely.

After looking at a number of refrigerator dill pickle recipes, my boyfriend and I picked up Ratio and realized we could simply brine cukes for a week. The idea simply hadn’t registered with us, despite the fact that we can pore over the book for hours at a time. (We’ve used ratios for meat brine and bread most recently.) We now have six jars of briny cukes on the counter, but they’re now cloudy – and that concerns me a bit. Here’s what we did on Saturday afternoon:

- washed and sliced lengthwise seven pounds of small cucumbers, some of which sat on a clean, but not immediately washed, counter
- hand-washed (but did not sanitize or boil) seven jars and their lids and rings
- brought 10 cups of tap water to high enough heat that we could dissolve four ounces of Penzeys kosher salt in it, then speed-cooled it in a separate container placed in an ice water bath, stirring nearly constantly
- while the brine cooled, packed jars with varying amounts of dried dill (we have TONS on hand), fresh garlic, fresh jalapenos, red pepper flakes, and black peppercorns, then sliced cukes
- filled jars with brine nearly to the very top and sealed. We had enough for every jar except the last quart, which we topped off with white vinegar just for kicks.

I then got paranoid and insisted that we stick the finished jars in the fridge instead of letting them rest on the counter. I recanted a few hours later and pulled them back out.

Since then, they’ve been turning steadily from bright, fresh green to the drab, camoflage greens I see in your tarragon dill pickle photo — that’s good. But — the brine is also getting cloudy. Not knowing whether this indicates some sort of infection or if it’s to be expected, I wonder if your readers or you may give me some ideas. I fear that we should have brought the brine AND the dill, garlic, jalapenos, etc. to a boil.

Anyone? Thanks in advance.

The only rule with them (because they are mostly Vegetarians), is if they are late — another baby animal “gets it”.

The rest are going to have to learn to read the book.

Congrats on this latest development. It won’t help my guys because is they are seen near their phone while on shift, I confiscate it, vacuum seal it and pin it to the “Wall o Shame”.

This has been a very successful technique with BOH.