Brined cucumber
Used in 4 recipes on RecipeWiki.
Brined cucumbers are small cucumbers fermented in salted water with dill, garlic and sometimes blackcurrant or oak leaves, the sour pickle of Russian and Eastern European kitchens. Unlike vinegar pickles, they get their tang from lactic fermentation, so they taste rounder, saltier and more garlicky, with a crunch that should snap. They are diced into Olivier Salad, and Rassolnik, whose name comes from the Russian word for pickle brine, owes its sour, savoury broth to them. Look for jars labelled fermented or brined rather than pickled in vinegar, and keep them submerged in their brine once open.
Most often cooked with
Dill
Onion
Brine
Carrot
Potato
Bay leaf
Ham
Soured creamRecipes with brined cucumber
Olivier Salad
Potato, egg, pea and pickle in mayonnaise, cut to an even dice and dressed only once everything is properly cold.
Potatoes
Russian
Side dishes
Rassolnik
Barley and pickled cucumber soup, sharpened at the end with the pickle brine itself rather than with vinegar.
Soups
Solyanka
A thick sour-salty soup of mixed cured meats, brined cucumbers, olives and lemon, built on their brine as much as stock.
Tomatoes
Vinegret
Beetroot, potato, carrot and sauerkraut dressed with oil rather than mayonnaise, with the beetroot oiled first to hold the colour.
