Canningpantry.com sells them online as do several other sources like cooking.com. Google "pickle crock" or "stoneware crock". Some recipes can be made in glass jars - canning jars or the heavy 5 gallon type.

Here, Walmart sells stoneware crocks and so does the Tractor Supply Company store and Orshliens - (got a local Farm & Feed type store?). I often see them in antique stores or at flea markets. But any stoneware or pottery crock will work.

Dave

Supermarket bakery departments get icing in rugged, food grade plastic buckets. If you happen to ask at the right time, when they have an empty one, they will happily give it to you. These buckets are suitable for use as 'crocks' for pickling.

Jim

Containers for fermenting.

Here is a link that might be useful: Fermenting containers.

Here is a source for crocks.

Jim

Here is a link that might be useful: Crocks

Personally I wouldn't recommend a crock, even though I used to pickle in one. They're expensive, heavy and prone to hairline cracks or are porous so that you end up with brine puddled on the floor. Old ones are also a challenge to sterilize. If your pickles turn moldy in a crock, the cleaning process can be a real challenge.

Carol

A stainless steel pot should be fine for fermented pickles. I use one for corning beef tongues--same basic process.

I use my blue speckled 12-qt. stockpot.
A Corelle dinner palte fits just perfectly to hold the cukes under the brine. It handles the heat or cold nicely.
A glass gallon jar works too, but it's harder to keep the cukes under the brine.

Are you willing to share your grandmother's recipe?

Deanna

Thank you!

Yes, I am willing to share it. I will have to find it and type it up first. She actually got it from her sister so it is really my great aunt's pickle recipe.

My grandmother died in 1980. Contact with her sisters was greatly reduced after that. At my great aunt's 100th birthday party last year someone brought the pickles. My father and cousins and I were so excited. We hadn't had them since 1980. We didn't know the recipe was being made by the part of the family we really didn't know very well. My father's sister and sister in law never made them.

I have a blue speckled 12 qt stock pot and easy access to bakery buckets. I'll try again. Gherkins are available right now at the farm stands.

Sounds like you're in business!
Thanks for sharing a TNT recipe!! Some of those old ones are the best!
No hurry.

Deanna

Stainless steel stockpot will work fine, if they get moldy, etc, you probably didn't skim them each day like you're supposed to or didn't have them completely covered with the brine.
I did that once too. But the next batch I skimmed twice a day and they turned out fine. You just have to make them when you need a project! Mine I made take about 22 days all together.