Fermented Escabeche

The Mexican pickle you need right now

When I lived in Chicago, my neighborhood had a lot of Mexican restaurants, many of which plunked a little bowl of this hot, tangy pickle down on your table as soon as you sat. It was a most welcome gesture, especially since I was pretty broke back then and took full advantage of the complementary condiment, either eating it with the chips that appeared alongside or lavishly garnishing my plate with pickles. Some places just had whole jalapeños, usually slit lengthwise to let the brine in, but most included carrots and onion or garlic, usually sliced fairly thickly so the vegetables retained their crunch.

Escabeche can be a confusing term. The roots of the word and method originated in Persia, spread throughout the Arab world, came to Iberia with the Moors (al-skepaj is Iberian Arabic), took root in Mediterranean cuisines, and then traveled around the world via Spain and Portugal to their many former colonies, including much of the Caribbean and as far away as the Philippines. It describes fish (sometimes meat and vegetables) that’s been cooked in an acidic sauce (with citrus and/or vinegar). For example you’ll see scapece in Sicily, and escoveitch in Jamaica, and while they’re seasoned according to local ingredients and tastes, under the hood they’re similar dishes. In Mexico, escabeche refers to pickled jalapeños, typically with carrots, onions, and sometimes other vegetables.

Whatever the local interpretation, vinegar is usually the common ingredient, and ironically that’s the one we’re leaving out of this version because we’re going to lacto-ferment it. We’re going to use bacteria to create our acidity (though bacteria create the acidity in vinegar, too, those are different bacteria and their work is long finished when we use the vinegar to add instant acidity to our food). Vinegar pickles need only a few hours to sour, so if you’re in a hurry feel free to go that route. But vinegar itself can take up to a year to ferment, so when you use it you’re profiting from a long fermentation.

Lactic acid bacteria do their jobs faster than their acetic brethren, so while vinegar needs a long time to fully ferment this escabeche should be pleasantly sour in a week or so depending on the temperature of your kitchen. It will continue to acidify the longer it sits, though much more slowly once refrigerated. And while lacto pickles generally lack vinegar’s acute sharpness, they deliver a more complex sourness and more subtly married flavors. So this is worth a try if you have the appropriate produce coming into your kitchen.

My version here used jalapeños, carrots, and onions, all of which are happily happening in my garden right now. There are also a couple of bay leaves at the bottom of the jar, and a spoonful of my pickled green coriander seeds—an example of adding something fermented to a ferment. You could obviously use dried coriander seeds, or fresh green ones if you’re lucky enough to have some on hand. And feel free to try other spices, too. There are no rules here, only suggestions.

If you want it hotter, you can upgrade to serranos, or try a mix of peppers. I omitted garlic, because I wanted the particular character of onion to shine (and I use garlic in just about all my other pickles). If you use habaneros and add some shredded cabbage and maybe a clove and some allspice, you’ll be getting pretty close to pikliz, a Haitian pickle that ranks among the world’s best. So assess your options and create a combination that sings to you.

Because these needed to be packed pretty tightly to fit in this quart jar, I opted to salt the vegetables before jarring them: 2% salt by weight, tossed well to combine and get the veggies shiny. If I had used a brine, the relatively small amount of space remaining in the jar would have made salinity an issue, since water from the vegetables would dilute the small amount of brine. It was easier to guarantee the required salinity of 2% (the minimum safe level for lacto-fermentation) by salting the veg.

Then I packed the jar, pushed in a weight, and added a little salt water to get the liquid about halfway up the side of the weight. The level of liquid increased overnight as the salt worked its osmotic magic. Let your jar sit on the counter overnight, then move it to a cool spot and leave the lid a little loose so gas can escape. Make sure the food is submerged in the liquid, and taste it every couple of days. When it’s tangy and awesome, eat it.

It’s cooled off dramatically here; we’re in the magic late summer period where days are clear and dry and nights are getting a bit chilly. It’s pretty wonderful, and we’ve also gotten some decent rain and there’s more on the way. So these are just going to sit on my counter for a few days, and then I’m going to soak some beans, make a batch of flour tortillas, and get all kids of busy with this jar of hot deliciousness.