You don’t need a recipe to make fermented or brined pickles, but you do need to keep the correct ratio of salt to water. Brine strength is the weight of salt as a percentage of the weight of the solution. Older recipes suggest that the salt weight be 10 percent of the weight of the solution—or one cup of salt per gallon of water. Modern cookbooks suggest seven to eight percent works equally well. Any vegetable can be brined. Love it or hate it, sauerkraut is the gold standard for a brined vegetable.
