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SPEAKER_05: Hey, and welcome to The Short Stuff. I'm Josh and Chuck's here and Jerry's here and Dave's here in spirit, everybody. And it's time to munch and chow down on The Short Stuff about pickles. One of the greatest things ever invented. We've talked about this before. I know it makes me weird. I don't like pickles.
SPEAKER_03: Does it make you weird? I just feel sad for you.
SPEAKER_05: I mean, I think most people love pickles. I have found some support in my family.
SPEAKER_03: My brother's son, my nephew, or nephew. I was about to call him my cousin because now he's a grown adult. It feels weird to call my nephew. But yeah, Noah is married now to his great wife, Ellie, and they are having a baby. And Ellie hates pickles just like me. Wow. That's unusual. Like, there's a stereotype of pregnant people wanting pickles in ice cream.
SPEAKER_03:
That's true. Actually, I should check back with her to see how that's going. And also, Ellie is equally annoyed as I am with this other fact, which is pickles are so ubiquitous on like a sandwich platter or a burger platter or whatever, that they don't even tell you on the menu that they're going to throw a big stinky pickle spear on your plate to let that juice infect like six of your french fries. Wow. You really don't like pickles. I tell people at restaurants, I was like, are there pickles? Yeah, but they're on the side. I was like, please do not even include them on my plate because that juice will infect either part of my hamburger bun or like five or six french fries. And they're always like, geez, dude, get a life. They say, you want me to hold the pickles? And you say, I want you to take the pickles and hold them between your knees.
SPEAKER_05:
Oh, great reference. So let's talk about pickles, Chuck, not just how much you dislike them or how much I love them, but where they came from in the first place. That's right. They have been around for a very, very long, long time.
SPEAKER_03: 2030 BCE is when people started transporting cucumbers across Mesopotamia. And that is like, as we've learned over the years, like a lot of foods that we have now are variations on other foods that receive that variation because they were trying to preserve it or transport it somewhere else. Yeah, those cucumbers. So it's in dispute.
SPEAKER_05: Our friends at Mental Floss pointed out that it's possible that what they were talking about were snake melons that later people transcribed or translated into cucumber, but that it wasn't actually cucumber. So we're not exactly sure when cucumbers hit the scene, but they did come out of the Mesopotamian area, the Middle East. We do know that. They probably hit Europe in the early medieval era. And we know that pickles came before cucumbers. People were pickling things as far back as 9000 years ago, according to ancient texts from China. They just weren't pickling cucumbers. They were pickling fish. They were pickling pigs' heads. They were pickling the heads of their enemy. Anything you could pickle, they were pickling – Pickling their livers. Yes, definitely. But they just weren't pickling cucumbers yet. Yeah, and that's generally what we're talking about here, to be clear, is the – we know you can pickle all kinds of things, but, you know, the old pickle that's on the plate that ruins the French fries.
SPEAKER_03:
It either came from the Dutch word pekel, P-E-K-E-L, or the German peukel, P-O-O-M-L-O-T. I'm sorry, that's not an oomlaot. I wonder if that's a mistake.
SPEAKER_05:
Pookel. It's got to be pookel with an oomlaot. Yeah, but it's a little – what do you call that accent in French?
SPEAKER_03: I think somebody fat-fingered that one.
SPEAKER_05: I think so, because I've never seen that in German.
SPEAKER_03: So I'm going to say it's supposed to be an oomlaot, P-O-K-E-L, which means salt or brine. And they used to be in the Victorian – in Victorian England, you know, pickles was something that you ate if you had a lot of money. And they also served them – they would pickle them in the house and then serve them or store them, rather, in what's called a pickle castor, C-A-S-T-O-R, which is – they would just kind of keep it as a centerpiece on the table. And if you look up, like, antique pickle castor, they're cool. They're beautiful. I don't know if you saw any pictures. I did. They look like – sort of like a – like a – like an oil lamp almost, like a really ornate oil lamp.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah. You know what I likened it to? It occurred to me – remember those old straw holders, glass cylinder straw holders?
SPEAKER_05: You'd pull the top and all the straws came up with it and you'd just pull one out? Yeah. The cylinder, it reminded me of that. But you would pickles instead of straws.
SPEAKER_03: And with – and with, like, a handle, like an oil lamp handle. Yeah. All the ones I saw had handles at least. Right. And you said that the pickle castor was associated with wealth, and it definitely was.
SPEAKER_05:
But I saw on a site called Back to the Past Collectibles, they posted about pickle casters. And the way they said it, pickles themselves were typically associated with rural areas. So if you were an urban wealthy person and you had a pickle caster, you're saying, I love pickles. Obviously, I'm not making them myself. Right. But I have staff and servants that are making it for me. Check out all of my pickles. That's how rich I am. So it's weird that it was a country thing, but in the city, it was a wealth kind of thing.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah. And I think that that fancy castor display had a lot to do with that. Definitely. But, yeah, for sure rural because, you know, people that farmed their own stuff and canned and preserved their own things and still do that kind of stuff. You know, I've told stories about my mom dragging me to the cannery when I was a kid. Of course, that's the people that are doing it themselves. Exactly. You know who loved a pickle back then? The Rurger.
SPEAKER_03: As far as commercial pickles that you can buy, like when they became a little more ubiquitous and affordable, H.J. Heinz, I was about to say canned up, but they were probably jarred originally, in 1860 is the first sort of widely available commercial pickled product. Yeah. And in 1893, there was this giveaway of a little pickle pendant at the World's Fair that year that was apparently so popular, it has gone down in history as like one of the most popular marketing plays ever. Yeah, I read about it in Atlas Obscura, and they said that the Heinz booth was hidden on like the second floor somewhere.
SPEAKER_05: And so Heinz started giving out flyers saying, come get your free memento. And it was just such a hit. Everybody wanted a free pickle for some reason. Not even a real pickle, a little plastic pickle that said Heinz on it that they were worried that the floor was going to give because so many people just swamped that place for so long. So yeah, it was a really big deal. It put Heinz on the map like as a household word.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah. Well, you said plastic and that thing had to be metal, right? No, it was a I can't remember what they called it, but it was like a proto plastic.
SPEAKER_05: Oh, wow. Crumbly, weird looking. It looked like it was whittled from wood. Not a pretty pickle at all, but people had to have it. And they'd attach it to like their watch chain or something like that and be like, oh, this? This is my Heinz pickle tchotchke that I got at the 1893 World's Fair.
SPEAKER_03:
I think it's a great time for a break. Okay. All right. We'll be right back with a tchotchke joke.
SPEAKER_00:
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SPEAKER_03: All right. As promised, we're back and I promise you a Chachki joke. And when I was in Mexico City, we went to the Leon Trotsky's house as part of the Frida Kahlo Casa Azul tour. I have a feeling I know where this is going.
SPEAKER_03: You know right where it's going, because my friend Tommy in the gift shop said, look at all these Trotsky Chachkis. And that became a fun thing that we said all weekend. Oh, I bet. We said that a lot and we said one more margarita a lot. Yeah, I bet. So Pickles H.J. Hines in 1860 did his thing. Clausen came around 10 years later in 1870. Mount Olive in 1926. And the old stork with the vlasic pickle is the relative newcomer on the block. Didn't start until 1942. Yeah, the stork who spoke like Groucho Marx for some weird reason.
SPEAKER_03: That's because Groucho Marx was the hottest thing going back then.
SPEAKER_05: I guess. So if you want to make pickles, I've made pickles before. And I love making pickles. It's like one of the most rager things you can do in your kitchen no matter where you are. And it's very, very easy depending on what kind of pickle you want to make. All right, what are you doing? I'm making salt brine pickles, which is called lacto-fermenting. Because what you're doing is creating a brine that actually encourages the growth of beneficial probiotic bacteria. And they go to town eating the sugars in the cucumbers and thus preserving it. But at the same time putting out lactic acid, which prevents dangerous bacteria from growing in your pickle brine. As long as your pickles are under the surface of the brine and they make little glass discs to weight them down. It's really neat. Then you can basically put the thing in the fridge and leave it for I think a few weeks. 30 days I think was the minimum. And pull them out and you have these strange tasting pickles. They don't taste like the pickles you're normally used to because it's a different way to make them than the stuff you buy off the shelf at the grocery store. All right, so that's the salt brine?
SPEAKER_03: Yes, salt brine or lacto-fermented.
SPEAKER_03: All right, you've also got your classic dill. You're going to use white vinegar for those. And then all of these generally except for your salt brining method have some kind of vinegar, usually white vinegar. And then the spices are where that particular variety of pickle gets its flavor. So in the case of a dill, you're going to have mustard seed. You're going to have dill obviously. Hopefully some fresh and some dried dill. That white vinegar, some white sugar, salt obviously. And I think that's it, right? Yeah, I mean you can get really creative with pickles.
SPEAKER_05: You can make them hot, you can make them garlicky, you can add whatever you want. But basically the split between different types of pickles, whether you use a vinegar brine or a salt brine. And the vinegar brine doesn't allow for beneficial bacteria to grow. So it's not a probiotic like lacto-fermented pickles or kimchi or sauerkraut. Those are all salt brine. But the vinegar brine pickles still have health benefits. They found that it actually reduces or steadies your blood sugar. And it can last for a while. It's not just like you're eating the pickle and your blood sugar is okay and then you finish the pickle and it goes crazy. It has like a lasting effect from vinegar. So no matter what kind of pickles you're eating, you're getting some kind of benefit from it. Alright, well you also got your bread and butter pickle.
SPEAKER_03: That's the one out of any pickle that sounds the most appetizing to me. Even though I think the name of this episode will be Pickles Colon How to Ruin a Good Cucumber. Because I love a cuke. Oh, I feel the exact opposite. I'm like get that disgusting thing out of my face and listen to pickles.
SPEAKER_05: What? You don't like cucumbers? No.
SPEAKER_03: Oh man, I love a cuke. No, it's like how can something be tasteless and taste disgusting at the same time? It's a mystery.
SPEAKER_05: Wow, really?
I can't stand cucumbers. Maybe a cucumber water if it's got lemon or basil or something in it. But there better not be actual cucumbers floating around in it. Wow, okay.
SPEAKER_03: Ugh. Alright.
SPEAKER_03: You ever try it with just a little pinch of sea salt? Yes, they're gross.
SPEAKER_05: You don't like them in a salad? I don't like cucumbers at all. That is remarkable. Unless, again, if they're pickled I love them. You hate cucumbers and love pickles. I love cucumbers and hate pickles.
SPEAKER_03:
We are yin and yang if we're nothing, Chuck.
SPEAKER_05: Well, maybe that's why we work.
SPEAKER_03: So the bread and buc- buc-er? The bread and butter is the white vinegar, salt, white sugar, I think more white sugar than the dill. And then you've got some celery seeds, some turmeric, some garlic, some onion, and some red chili flakes. Yeah, there's loads of sugar in bread and butter because the two flavor profiles are sweet and tangy.
SPEAKER_05: It's a strange combination, but if you're in the mood for it, a good bread and butter pickle is pretty good. And apparently the tradition of ruining your sandwich platter, or even worse, if they wrap up a pickle in a sandwich wrapper to go, like beside the sandwich, unforgivable.
SPEAKER_03: I don't know what you're talking about.
SPEAKER_05:
You know, if you like just like- I know what you're saying. I don't understand how it's unforgivable. It makes no sense because pickles are so great. That started in New York delis, specifically Jewish delis, Jewish immigrants, started in the 1930s offering dill pickles as a palate cleanser.
SPEAKER_03:
Yeah. Because that acid helps contrast with that, you know, maybe that fatty meat sandwich you're eating and it's got a nice little crunch to it. I do like a crunch, but that's why I love cucumbers. They crunch. I didn't think pickles- I thought they were less crunchy because they're soaked in garbage.
SPEAKER_05:
No, that's the wrong kind. So, if you have non-crunchy pickles and you're buying them off the shelf, they were baked or they were cooked, essentially, boiled in a water bath. It doesn't actually boil, but it kills off any beneficial bacteria that might have been in it because it kills it with temperature and it also makes the pickles themselves flimsy. If you have lacto-fermented salt brine pickles, there's your crunchy pickle. Those can be done with little enough salt that you get what's called a half sour and it tastes much more like a cucumber than a normal pickle does. So, I think you should try a half sour dill pickle. You know what? I'm going to try one because- do those have vinegar at all?
SPEAKER_03: No, they're salt brined as far as I know.
SPEAKER_05: Alright, maybe I should try that because the vinegar, you know, I'm on record as the vinegar is part of the problem. I don't like a lot of white vinegars and apple cider vinegar is pretty rough.
SPEAKER_03: I do like balsamic vinegars and things like that. It's very specific. I'm meaty and I'm picky.
SPEAKER_05:
Is that it? That's it. I just wanted to get real at the end.
SPEAKER_05: Is that how we're going to end the episode?
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, Chuck is meaty and picky.
SPEAKER_05: Alright, well then Short Stuff is out.
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