Quick Salted Cucumbers

Make it step by step

1. Choose small firm cucumbers with bumpy skin and no soft spots.
2. Avoid long smooth salad cucumbers. They hold too much water, salt unevenly and go hollow in the middle within a day.
3. Wash them and stand them in a bowl of cold water for 2-3 hours if they are not garden fresh. Cucumbers lose water on the way to a shop, and one that goes into the brine limp comes out limp.
4. Trim two or three millimetres off the blossom end of each cucumber, which is the end opposite the stalk scar.
5. Prick each cucumber two or three times with a fork, so the brine gets in and they salt through in a day rather than three.
6. Put the salt in a jug with 500ml of just-boiled water and stir until it has completely dissolved and the water is clear.
7. Pour in the remaining 500ml of cold water, which should bring the brine to about 55C/130F, warm to a finger rather than hot.
8. Use a warm brine rather than a boiling one. Warm brine gets salt into a cucumber inside a day where cold brine needs three, and brine poured on at a boil cooks the flesh soft and it never crunches again.
9. Put half the dill, the garlic, peppercorns, coriander seeds, bay leaves and any tannin leaves into a clean 2 litre jar or a deep bowl.
10. Pack the cucumbers in upright and tight, so they hold each other down.
11. Lay the rest of the dill over the top.
12. Pour the warm brine over until the cucumbers are covered by at least a centimetre.
13. Weigh them down with a small plate or a sealed bag of water.
14. Everything must stay under the brine. Anything standing in the air goes soft and then grows mould, and one cucumber sticking out spoils the jar.
15. Cover loosely with a lid set on but not screwed down, or with a cloth. This is a live ferment and it makes gas.
16. Leave the jar at room temperature, around 20C/68F, for 24 hours.
17. Taste one after a day. It should be salted right through, still bright green under the skin, and it should snap rather than bend when you break it.
18. Give it another 12-24 hours if the middle still tastes of plain cucumber, tasting again at each stage.
19. Move the jar to the fridge as soon as they taste right, which slows the fermentation almost to a stop.
20. Eat them within a week, while they still crunch.
21. Expect them to go on souring slowly in the fridge. After a fortnight they are proper sour pickles rather than lightly salted ones, which is a different thing and the one the rassolnik in this collection actually wants.
22. Keep the brine when the cucumbers are gone. It is an ingredient in its own right, and both rassolnik and solyanka are built on it.