Preserving Summer's Vegetables - Pickle Like the German Do

Ah, summer—the season of sun, fun, and an overabundance of fresh produce. But what do you do when the season’s best starts piling up on your kitchen counter? Enter the ancient art of preserving summer’s vegetables: pickling and fermenting are the ultimate ways to bottle up summer’s bounty and enjoy it all year long—no preservatives, no additives, just pure, delicious goodness.

Pickling is very much a core tenet of German and Central European cuisine. The climate in the region is perfect for growing firm veggies that lend themselves well to be preserved in vinegar, water and spices. Like cucumbers of all sorts, white cabbage green cabbage, turnips, rutabagas and many more firm root veggies that lend them. While the English language uses “pickling” as as the catch-all word for the process, Germans use interchangeably “einmachen,” (to preserve something in a liquid) “einlegen,” (to immerse something in a liquid) or “einwecken” (to preserve something in a glass jar – see more about this word below). Here is a quick guide for first-time picklers and language learners to preserve veggies the German way.

Looking for great tasting pickling vinegar? Visit our sister site The Taste of Germany for a wide selection of wine and herb vinegars and pickled veggies and juniper berries!

Different Ways to Preserve Vegetables:

Before the days of fridges and freezers, previous generations had to get creative to keep their veggies from spoiling over the winter months. Seafarers, migrating settlers, or warring armies, relied on these time-tested methods to ensure they had something tasty (and nutritious) to munch on, no matter the season:

Gärung/Fermentierung (engl: to ferment): Vegetables are combined with salt, put under pressure so that the water contained in the veggies is extruded and forms a brine. Placed inside hermetically sealed jar and submersed in the salty brine, the veggies’ own bacteria will convert the veggie’s sugar into lactic acid which will turn sweet in to sour fermented, preserved vegetables that have amazing health benefits and taste great in the winter. Think of sauerkraut and kimchi.
Pökeln (engl.to pickle or cure): Primarily meat, but also carrots, onions and some cucumbers are immersed in a liquid with sodium nitrate (in German “Lake”) which preserves the meat and veggies, but without fermentation
Einlegen/ Einwecken (engl. to pickle): Vegetables are immersed in white wine vinegar, herbs and spices, hard alcohol or oil and preserved in tightly closed jugs or jars. This is your preferred methods to make great tasting pickled cucumbers.
Einkochen/ Eindicken (engl: cooked or thickened). Veggies are cooked over medium/high heat with sugar, salt, vinegar and then placed in sealed glass jars.
Dörren (engl:drying): Veggies are cut and dried over low heat for a long time.

What Veggies Are Best to Pickle:

Central and Northern Europeans cultivate a large variety, over 10 different types, of cucumbers, both on open fields (“Freiland”) as well as in greenhouses (“Treibhaus”). Large Salad cucumbers (“Salatgurken”) are grown in greenhouses, while pickling cucumbers (“Freilandgurke” or “Einlegegurke”) are mostly harvested in open fields. These have nobs or pricks on the outside skin. Other veggies that lend themselves to the “Einlegeprozess” (pickling process) are small red or white onions, colorful peppers, zucchini, radish, cauliflower, kohlrabi, turnips, rutabaga, fennel, boletus mushrooms and chard.

Einwecken: How a brand name for pickling glass jars became generic

Preserving food has been a a focus of inventors and scientists throughout the centuries – not just to secure food over cold winter months but also for the sake of food safety. The technique of creating a vacuum by heating air and reducing the oxygen was already invented in the 17th century. Yet it took until the late 1890s until chemist and glass maker Rudolf Rempel in Gelsenkirchen (North Rhine Westphalia) to develop and patent a technique to manufacture thick glass jars with extremely smooth edges that could be hermetically sealed with a simple lid and a rubber ring. The content inside the ring could thus be heated and sterilized in a way that the gases inside the glass jar could escape while the content inside and the glass jars itself remained full intact without changes in form and function.

Rempel’s best customer was Johann Carl Weck who purchased the patent and sales rights to the invention and thus became Germany’s sole and leading manufacturer of the “Weckglass” – the perfect vessel to heat vegetables or mashed fruits inside the hermetically sealed jar and thus preserve, pickle and store them in one easy, quick and convenient process. In fact, Weckglass jars became so popular and ubiquitous in German households that the word “einwecken” became synonymous for the pickling process. A great example how a protected commercial brand name can morph into a popular generic term. The Weck glass and packaging GmbH is still operating and selling “Weckgläser” all over the world.

Fermentation in Five Fun Steps

Pick Your Jars: Glass jars are your best friend here. Go for ones with a rubber seal (Weckglass) or a screw top, and don’t forget to sterilize them with boiling water or steam. Nobody likes moldy veggies.
Chop, Salt, and Squeeze: Wash those veggies, chop them nice and fine, add a pinch of salt, and give them a good press until they release some liquid. Think of it as veggie therapy.
Fill ‘Em Up: Pack those jars with your veggies and their liquid, but leave a little room at the top for the gases that’ll escape during fermentation. Make sure everything is submerged—oxygen is not your friend here.
Patience, My Friend: For the first few days, open the jars daily to release the gas. After about 14 days (depending on the weather), you’ll have some perfectly fermented veggies.
Enjoy the Fruits (or Veggies) of Your Labor: Keep your fermented goodies in the fridge until you’re ready to dig in. Then, let the snacking begin!