A kitchen, a crop,
and a lot of jars
PicklePick has no factory, no production line and no plans to build either. What we have is a scrubbed kitchen, a supplier list of people we know by name, and a shelf that fills up in summer so it can empty out in winter.
Too many cucumbers
The first batch was not a business decision. It was a garden that produced more than anyone could eat, and a grandmother's recipe card written in handwriting that took a while to decode.
What came out of those first jars was better than anything we had bought. Not because of any secret, but because the cucumbers had been in the ground that morning and in the brine by lunchtime. That gap, the hours between the field and the jar, is the entire trick.
We kept it small on purpose
Every batch is forty jars or fewer. It is small enough that one person can taste the brine, adjust the salt, and stand there while the jars seal. Scale past that and you start buying vegetables you have never seen, from people you have never met.
We would rather run out in August than pack something in July that we would not put on our own table.
What goes in a jar
Vegetables or fruit. Vinegar, either white wine, cider or malt depending on the jar. Non-iodised salt. Sugar where the recipe needs it. Whole spices, never ground blends. Water. That is the list.
1. Picked
Produce comes in from growers within driving distance, usually the morning it was cut.
2. Prepped
Washed, trimmed and packed the same day. Nothing sits in a cold room waiting its turn.
3. Brined
Hot brine over cold produce, whole spices in the jar, sealed while it is still steaming.
4. Rested
Two to six weeks in the dark before a jar goes anywhere. This is the part nobody wants to wait for.
The things we will not do
We will not use colourant to make a beetroot jar redder or a dill jar greener. We will not pack out of season and call it fresh. We will not put a preservative in a jar so that it can sit on a shelf for three years, because a properly sealed pickle does not need one.
And we will not take an order we cannot fill properly. If a batch runs out we will tell you when the next one is ready rather than substituting something you did not ask for.
Where we are going
Online payments and shipping are on the list, but not yet. For now the ordering is deliberately human: you send us what you want, we reply, and if you have a question about what goes with what, you are talking to the person who packed it.