See next post for results
Background
This is a continuation of my just-prior gardening post.
The goal of this experiment is to come up with home canned no-salt sour dill pickle. Not a refrigerator pickle, not a sweet pickle, not a “low-salt” pickle that has half as much salt as a regular pickle. But a canned, shelf-stable sour pickle with no or negligible sodium content. That tastes OK.
The deep background is that I’m deciding whether or not to plant a second round of cucumbers in my garden. Before I do that, I need to know what I’m going to do with the resulting fruit. For storing a lot of cucumbers, long-term, my only option is to pickle them. And as I don’t particularly like sweet pickles, and I’m trying to get the salt out of my diet, that means finding a decent no-salt dill pickle recipe.
Yesterday I did my research to see what my options are for a safe method for producing no-salt canned pickles. It was slim pickings. I identified two safe and plausible methods for keeping pickles crisp without salt, and exactly one option for a salt substitute. (I have doubts about the ice bath for crispness, but it’s certainly harmless.)
From that, I settled on testing those three factors in a strict 2x2x2 experimental design:
- Ice bath or not.
- Pickle Crisp low/high
- Salt substitute low/high.
Today’s experiment
This morning my wife picked up five pounds of pickling cucumbers as she shopped our local farmers’ market. Above you see half of them, on ice.
After extensive discussions, she convinced me that I ought to think more like a chef, and less like a scientist. I’m not trying to determine the independent effects of those three components. I’m trying to find a low/no salt recipe that tastes good. It makes more sense to take some guesses as to what might work well, and try those. Rather than rigidly complete the 2 x 2 x 2.
Plus, there’s really no accounting for the quality of the cucumbers in that 2 x 2 x 2 design. These pickling cucumbers look pretty old. Maybe all these pickles will turn out badly because of that, and not because low-salt pickles are inherently a bad idea.
So here’s the new and much-improved plan for the seven pints of pickles that will fit into my canner. Each jar will use a basic half-vinegar/half water brine. Each will have a sprig of dill. Each will use the amount of sugar recommended in the USDA Guide recipe for fresh pack pickles. I will of course cut off the blossom ends, and otherwise process as I normally would.
Owing to the complexity of this, and the small quantity of each recipe being produced, I’m going to put the non-sugar dry ingredients directly into each jar, then pour the boiling vinegar/sugar/water mix over them to dissolve them. That allows me to set up the seven jars ahead of time, then fill/pack/process. Because these are pints, I’ll cut pickles in half as needed to fill the jar more completely.
The quantities for each ingredient assume that brine will fill half the volume each jar, and the cucumbers will fill the rest.
The seven pint jars will be set up as follows:
Near as I can tell, the only thing I can’t test with this layout is whether the “normal” dose of Pickle Crisp would be adequate. What you see above is three times the amount recommended on the jar. My feeling is, this should be safe and harmless. And if I can find an acceptable pick in this round, I can always try backing off on the pickle crisp in a later round.
Once I’ve canned these and cooled them, I’ll do a blind taste test. Might as well make it a repeated-test design. Write the batch numbers on the bottom of two sets of Dixie cups, place one pickle per cup, have my wife scramble them, then rate them in the order they end up. The rating categories will be: crispness, saltiness, sourness, off flavors (e.g., metallic taste), and overall. With two tastings of each pickle, I should be able to tell whether there is some consistent difference (the ratings mostly match) or whether I’m just making stuff up (they don’t).
And so, while half the cucumbers sit in their ice water bath, and a handful sit in a salt bath, I’m now going to go pick some dill, make up the seven containers, the vinegar/water mix, and so on. Number the jar lids. Get the water boiling. Can them. Cool them. Taste them. And report back the results.
More later.
Oops: Is the ice-bath method safe?
As I began the canning process, gathering the jars and lids and such, I had a disturbing thought: Is this ice-bath method safe?
Without salt, I need some alternative way to keep the cucumbers crisp. Sitting the cucumbers in an ice bath for a few hours was one of just two methods for pickle crispness that appeared to be safe and potentially effective. (Other approaches for crispness either entail risks, or are appropriate only for fermented pickles, if then.)
And so, as part of this experiment, I’m trying the ice-bath technique for making crisper pickles.
That recommendation was promulgated by seemingly-responsible organizations. It was on the website of a major vendor of canning supplies. It was, in fact, on the website of the Penn State U extension service (on this page).
But that’s not in the USDA guidelines. And I have yet to see even a hint of an explanation as to how that ice-water bath keeps the cucumbers crisper.
But as I get ready to fire up the stove and get the water and brine boiling, it suddenly occurs to me how that ice bath might actually work. Arguably, it will keep those cucumbers from reaching the proper temperature when I process them in the water-bath canner.
Pickles go soft through one of several mechanisms. One is that enzymes in the blossom end of the cucumber break down the pectin, making the cucumber soft. For fermented cucumbers, a second method is that the bacteria in the ferment do the same thing. Finally, heat in excess of 185F also breaks down the pectin and softens the cucumber, hence the recommendation to pasteurize the jars (at 180F, for an extended period of time) instead of boiling them, where possible, to preserve crispness. (Not recommended for a salt-free pickle recipe.)
I also know that processing (boiling) time depends on method of packing. In general, the hot-pack method (where produce is first cooked, then loaded into the jars hot) requires shorted boiling times to achieve sterilization. By contrast, cold-pack methods — where the raw produce is packed into the jar, then the jar goes into the boiling-water canner — typically call for longer processing (boiling) times.
I also know that certain types of produce must be canned in smaller containers only, because the interiors of the jars don’t get hot enough. And that nothing other than a few types of juice may be safely canned in half-gallon Ball jars, again because the food in the interior of the jar won’t get hot enough. So getting the food thoroughly heated through is not automatic.
Well …. by extension, if I pack in not just raw produce, but ice-cold produce, shouldn’t the safe boiling time go up? Shouldn’t this “ice-pack” method require a longer boiling time than standard (room-temperature) cold-pack?
My guess is that this “ice pack” method results in (at least) the interior of the cucumber remaining below the boiling point of water. Or in reaching the boiling point of water for a reduced amount of time. And that’s why the resulting pickles are crisper.
But is that safe?
For this experiment, I’m going to eat these right away, so it really doesn’t much matter. But if it turns out that the ice-pack approach works, I’m going to think long and hard before I use that on a routine basis.
My suspicion is that what I’m getting with ice-pack cucumbers is under-processed pickles. I need to see some reputable organization explicitly assure me that the resulting product is as safe as standard cold-pack pickles, before I would be willing to use that on pickles destined for long-term storage.
We now return to our regularly scheduled programming. Then next thing you see here should be the results, this evening. canning, followed eventually by the taste test results.
Canning
The canning proceeded in a surprisingly orderly and nearly error-free fashion. (In retrospect, I may have over-salted the traditional salt pickle.) One pot for the vinegar/water/sugar brine. Seven hot pints, each with different chemicals in them. Ladle in a bit of hot brine, swish it around, toss in the dill, pack in the relevant pickles (brined, ice bath, no treatment). Fill, clean, seal, and boil as usual.
Culminating in what every home canner wants to hear:
Now it’s just a question of waiting for them to cool, and seeing how they taste. Ideally, you’d let this sit for a couple of weeks, to let the flavors develop. Here, by contrast, odds are that half of these will be spit-them-out inedible. I’m really just testing to see whether any of the no-salt recipes are palatable, at all. After which, I can do another round to tweak it for best flavor.
The ratings come next, but I may have to let these cool overnight.
