Telluride Daily Planet, Friday, October 10, 2025

Even as a toddler, I loved pickles. In 1962, my family crossed the Atlantic on the SS United States, a sleek luxury liner that would take us to my father’s last tour of duty for the U.S. Army in France. And the story my mother told was that when I asked for a pickle at a formal dinner at the captain’s table, it was brought by my favorite waiter under a silver dome. I guess that set some kind of bar.

While in France, I developed a taste for watercress or celery root salads made with sharp vinaigrettes — any salad, really, that contained vinegar. And I couldn’t get enough of the tiny “cornichons” pickles traditionally served with fatty and meaty things like fondues and pâtés.

Growing up back in the States, pickles were back-to-basics staples, jars of store-bought dills and the occasional sweet bread-and-butter chips my French mom would turn her nose up at. We also ate salad every night without fail after the main course. Does Dijon mustard give me a fermentation point? It does, in fact, as it contains lactobacillus plantarum and pediococcus.

It was in New York City in the 80s, however, that I encountered Guss’ Pickles on the Lower East Side, my first encounter with real fermented vegetables. There, I was handed the biggest pickle I had ever seen — plucked from a giant barrel, which stood alongside a miscellany of other big barrels, in a shop devoted to pickles, on a street once lined entirely by pickle vendors. Fermentation had arrived from Eastern Europe at the turn of the century and planted itself in the active immigrant community concentrated in lower Manhattan.

Fast forward to the present day and a vigorous pickling and fermenting boom in the United States, which has breezily borrowed and stolen from other cultures and burgeoned, elevating the process and its foods higher and higher on the culinary and health echelons.

If you’re like me and know inherently that pickles and fermented foods are good for your digestion (in moderate amounts), know also that they are quite easy to make at home. A kimchi-on-everything trend has revived the notion of fermented cabbage and boosted home projects to new levels of potency and umami (savoriness).

Fermented pickles, demystified, have come to stay (I hope). Personally, instead of going to great lengths to procure a box of pickling cucumbers and process vinegar pickles, I choose making a gallon jar of fermented pickles (which use salt and water, spices and time in a dark spot), then repack them into smaller jars and store them in the refrigerator.

Last week, when a gardener friend gave me a home-grown and robust Napa cabbage (which can be hard to find in the organic produce section), I took the opportunity to look for an easy, new kimchi recipe. I settled on one with fish sauce and substituted gochujang (Korean chili paste) for the Korean chili peppers. I added a bunch of radishes and went slightly lower on the garlic since the associated dragon breath can be over the top – as can simply popping the lid off near any unprepared bystander. (My Korean niece-in-law says they had a different refrigerator specifically for the kimchi.) “How to Make Easy Cabbage Kimchi” from The Kitchn has been bookmarked, because even with shortcuts and substitutions, it started fermenting within half a day. Wowza. Watch out

Fermented foods are everywhere, by the way, not just in kimchi or sauerkraut but also in breads (sourdough) and yogurt and kefir, in wine and beer, some vinegars, olives, kombucha (of course), cheese, miso, soy sauce and chocolate. Foods to ferment at home might also include carrots, beets, green beans, radishes, lemons and homemade mustards and vinegars. Foragers can even ferment pine or spruce tips. (Something I’d like to try.) I made kombucha in the 90s in Telluride when one person alone was handing out symbiotic cultures of bacteria and yeast, better known as SCOBYs (the starter blobs), and we drank it for over a year, despite the fumes in the coat closet (where we grew them).

The health benefits of fermented foods are many, my friends. They introduce probiotics into the gut for a healthier microbiome; can increase nutrient absorption; can improve metabolic and heart health by regulating blood sugar; can improve mood by way of the gut-brain axis; and can support immunity by lowering endotoxins. If you’re like me and have issues with dairy or gluten or have other sensitivities, they just feel right (in the right dose).

If none of this appeals, fear not: You can also just drink pickle juice, for many of the same reasons. One to two tablespoons before dinner regulates blood sugar spikes. A little more in water will provide a free electrolyte beverage for rehydrating after a workout. You can even buy pickle juice by the gallon these days.