Three recipes for cucumber pickling brine by the chefs at Ambiente, Triko Tábor and Essens

A standard pickle brine typically includes water, fermented vinegar, salt, and sugar, but in the Czech region you’ll also find pickles soaked for a few weeks in salted water with spices, vinegar pickles with vegetables, or “Znojmo-style” pickles, which are lacto-fermented and only then pickled in vinegar. The proportions of the basic ingredients and spices are determined by the cook’s preference, but also the intended use of the pickles — in potato salads, for example, the pickled cucumbers must meet strict expectations.

A pickling jar can contain carrots, onions, mustard seeds, and bay leaves, as well as dill flowers and stems, cloves, cinnamon, whole peppercorns, and allspice. Time-tested recipes also call for sour cherry and grapevine leaves, juniper and caraway, cilantro, ginger, or horseradish. Chefs also suggest adding bergamot, blackberry leaves, tarragon stems, basil and lovage, cardamom, chilli, and fennel seeds, and they substitute fermented vinegar with wine vinegar or apple cider vinegar. It depends on how far they want to stray from the classic taste to which there's traditional emotional attachment. The following recipes stick close to it!

A basic brine by UM

At UM on Prague's Národní Street, they spent a long time perfecting the recipe for Our Pickles, to create pickles that would taste great on their own, while still fitting into classic Czech dishes without disrupting their familiar flavour profiles. The path to simplicity is often a long one!

For the brine:

• 700 ml water
• 30 g salt
• 60 g granulated sugar
• 220 ml vinegar (fermented)

For the jar:

• 10 g peeled carrots, sliced
• 10 g peeled onion, sliced into rings
• 3.4 g yellow mustard seeds

Pickling brine from Tábor

A recipe by chef Vojta Kalášek, who runs the kitchen at Triko in Tábor. This sweet-and-sour brine is designed to capture a familiar flavour that most chefs feel no need to innovate.

For the brine:

• 3 l water
• 1 l of fermented vinegar
• 160 g salt
• 280 g sugar
• 32 sugarin tablets

In a jar:

• 3 allspice berries
• 3 black peppercorns
• 1 clove
• ½ teaspoon yellow mustard seeds
• 3 slices of carrot
• 1 slice of horseradish
• 1 slice of onion
• 1 bay leaf
• a sprig of dill

Pytlochy from Moravia

At the Essens restaurant in South Moravia, cucumbers are pickled in a brine for “pytlochy,” which hold a place of honour in Roman Vaněk’s cookbook. The pickled cucumbers, along with the spices and brine, go into a stoneware pot and later into a vacuum-sealed bag. Kept in the refrigerator, they retain their fresh green colour and crispness.

For the brine:

• 4 l water
• 1 liter of fermented vinegar
• 2 packages of Deko preservative mix
• 95 sugarin tablets

In a stoneware pot:

• 1.2 kg peeled carrots, thinly sliced
• 2.7 kg peeled onions, sliced into half-moons
• 10 dill stalks, including the flowers

And the leftover brine?

Don’t pour out any leftovers! Extra brine can be used for further pickling (of vegetables, flower buds, and fruits) or added to sauces instead of vinegar — it balances the flavour of Znojmo and dill sauce, and can be mixed into dressings, perhaps for a fresh cucumber salad. Try swirling into mayonnaise or butter beurre blanc too — the hint of cucumber complements fish especially well. When adding to recipes, take into account the level of acidity and sweetness in the brine.

When used as a seasoning, brine is usually reduced to enhance its intensity. At Čestr, the reduced marinade is whisked into butter, which is then seasoned with fresh horseradish juice and mustard seeds and served with schnitzel, along with fresh dill and pickles. A few spoonfuls of the brine will enhance sour lentils, spreads, or other dishes and serve as the acidic component in marinades for meat and fish.

The chefs at Essens use brine to pickle hard-boiled eggs, which are served with pancetta and Hollandaise sauce flavoured with brine, alongside sparkling wine from the Gala winery. To accompany trout, they prepare a sauce made from yogurt, which is salted, slightly diluted with pickle brine, and drizzled with dill oil. This simple combination of yogurt and cucumber brine create a brilliant salad dressing.

At Bufet in Karlín, they save the brine for the Dva kohouti brewery. It’s then poured at the bar as part of the Pickleback drink, where whiskey is washed down by a shot of brine — the acidity and salt help neutralise the strong alcohol. It's the same reason why pickled cucumbers have become famous as a hangover remedy.

The saltiness of the pickles encourages you to drink more (water!), which mitigates the effects of alcohol, but most importantly, the sourness helps raise blood sugar levels. This is because it activates the liver, which releases glycogen into the bloodstream, making the body instantly feel better. Much like magnesium, pickle brine helps relieve muscle pain — and also removes limescale from a kettle. It's basically a miracle cure!

The vegetables from the brine can be chopped up and added to potato salads or used as a base for sauces and soups, but they’re more often served as pickles in their own right, or Japanese tsukemono — as an appetiser with charcuterie, as a side dish with grilled meats, or perhaps on toast.