dry salting

Dunno about Garden Produce,but the restaurant where I work has an in house made salt dry cured salmon appetiser on the menu that seems to be quite popular with the Customers...Unfortunately ,I don't have a taste for it or smoked salmon to be able to have a personal opinion on which tastes better! I'm still asking people who have had it which they'd prefer or how they'd compare the 2...As I understand it,the salting is only the first part of the process,so later processing involves removal from the salt and the addition of herbs and spices..apparently,it's not that salty afterwards..How long this process will preserve produce I have yet to discover!

Crocks can still be bought new, but they're expensive. Try Ace Hardware or Lehmans.com You don't want to buy a used crock because you don't know what it's been used for. Crockery has pores that will hold, for instance, the flavor of vinegar or dill, or the fermentation that is necessary for sauerkraut. People used to (and some still do) keep several crocks, one for each process. I've heard that you can use a food safe plastic bucket for fermented vegetables, but I've never been able to make it work. And to answer your last question, the produce is changed totally by a dry salt. The salt draws the moisture out of the produce and the moisture ferments, changing the produce. Sauerkraut is a good example of a salted vegetable. It tastes nothing like the cabbage it started out as. You can rinse and soak it and it still isn't cabbage. In my experience, no vegetable tastes the same, although you can get much of the salt out. That said, if you enjoy fermented vegetables, salting them is a great way to make and preserve them. Whether it's worth it or not depends on your definition and your purpose. My advice is to try a small amount first to see how it works and if you like the result.