the words i am familiar with are "pasteurised" and "fermented" this is why my confusion.

the fermentation stops once there is no oxygen left, they should remain stable for at least 6 months at standard room temperature.

you won't get this effect if you sterilise them first, the bacteria that form the natural preservative acids are naturally present on the vegetables.

i saw this being done in front of me at that house in Sofia and i saw numerous other people doing the same things. the process is identical to making sauerkraut, it stores for ages if it's sealed up. when i was living in serbia, we were eating from jars that were just stored in a pantry, once opened they are kept in the fridge but if they are fully fermented and were adequately salted in the first place and were not pasteurised they will last easily 6 months in cool, low light conditions.

i also bought this stuff in the supermarket in Bosnia, it was a standard item. it was kept in the same area as white cheese and meats and such, yes, but it is longer dated than even white cheese in brine, even just in plain resealable plastic tubs like used for yoghurt.

let me try to find an english language guide to making turshia/sharena salata.

shit, ok, here's serbo-croatian:

https://domacirecepti.net/tursija/

How to put a pickle? There is no special recipe here, it is very important that the vegetables you choose,  which are the ones you love the most, are healthy, firm and without various blemishes or bruised parts. The cucumbers and pepper that you put in should be firm and that when you break the cucumber it will burst, like when you cut through a twig, and that it should not be full inside, without any air. The pepper should also be crisp, firm, with no soft parts, open one to see if it is healthy inside.

The amount of vegetables is of your choice, as well as the vegetables you will put. Usually it is a bell pepper or a tomato pepper, cucumbers   no longer than 10 cm. Cauliflower must be white as snow, not accidentally yellow or starting to turn yellow. These are all factors that can spoil a pickle. The carrot must not be soft. Green tomatoes, fresh cabbage cut into several pieces and onions, hot peppers are usually added, depending on who likes what.

The vegetables that are placed must be washed very well before being placed in (usually) the barrel. Choose the washing method, whether it will be a new dish sponge or a new toothbrush. I prefer a brush because, in my opinion, it washes all the depressions and wrinkles on the cucumbers better. the screws are washed one by one, rubbed with a sponge or brush and transferred to another water. It is washed in three waters.

Wash well the dish in which you will arrange the vegetables. It is best to wash with a solution of vinegar and water after washing with detergent and rinsing with warm water.

Clean all vegetables that have a stem in the same way as this pepper in the picture is cleaned, that is, remove the stem and the part up to the pepper, the same is done with cucumbers, cut off the tops, peel the middle part of tomatoes where the stem was, cauliflower is cut into smaller bouquets, the carrot is cleaned and the ends are cut off, the onion is cleaned well, the cabbage is inspected, the first leaves are removed, it is cut and inspected inside. Babura and horn peppers can be filleted and this way you can get rid of the possibility of them spoiling, because then you can see if any of them are rotten inside, which would not be visible when the pepper is whole. Babura paprika can also be filled with grated cabbage.

Arrange the vegetables in the selected dish in which the pickle will be. Usually, it is arranged in a row of peppers, then a row of cucumbers, then a row of tomatoes, then a row of cauliflower and rolled until the vegetables are used up. Then a bay is made.

Bay for 5 kg of vegetables:

3 liters of water

1 liter of alcoholic vinegar

150 g of salt

200 g of sugar

10 g of preservatives

5 gr of grapes

washed peppercorns (1 bag)

Preparation:

Boil 1 liter of water and when it cools down, shake off the salt and sugar, preservative and grape wine, as well as pepper. Stir to dissolve everything, then pour the rest of the water and vinegar. Everything will then be lukewarm and wait for it to cool down, then pour it over the prepared vegetables.

Another way is to combine vinegar and water, then add the other ingredients, but then you have to stir until everything dissolves, the preservative needs a little more time because it is harder to dissolve in cold water. But even if you boil water, you must not put the preservative in the boiling water.

When you pour the pickle over, you have to buy the hoops that are put over it, the diameter is usually the same as the barrel itself, and then you put something heavier over it, it can be a cabbage stone or if you don't have one, a well-washed, filled 2l bottle can serve. It should not be too heavy, just to hold the vegetables under the hoop so that they do not float to the surface, so that everything is at bay.

The container is tightly closed with a lid and left to stand for 21 days without opening, after which time it can be opened, inspected and served.

ok, that took me some effort to transcribe for some reason copy and paste was disabled for me.

if you follow that, basically 3 weeks it needs to be fermented for 3 weeks, and the critical thing is that this process happens without any contact with air. the vegetables need to be held down under the water or they will go wrong.

i never actually made the effort to properly learn how it's done, but the above information will let you do it correctly.

yes, what you have probably does need to be refrigerated, but if it's done properly, it won't.

one of the other important things, this is technical and probably it would be hard to find this information exactly anywhere, if you prepare the water by fully boiling it, this drives most of the air out of the solution, as gases are more soluble in liquids when they are cool, when they are hot, the gases are driven out.

this is why boiled water makes clear ice cubes and not boiled water makes ice cubes with bubbles trapped inside it.

eliminating the air is critical to getting this fermentation to happen correctly, and also why in addition to boiling the water before you let it cool and (gently) covering your vegetables, they must be held under the water and the whole apparatus should be sealed up, doesn't have to be extremely well sealed, you do want the yeast to ferment the sugars you put in the mix, and that the veg leaks out to go all the way to vinegar.

the vinegar that is formed is very mild, in any case, salt is the main flavour you will observe.