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pickling Pickling questions

tooninoz

tooninoz

I never seem to have a great deal of success with pickling my chillis. They do the job, which is the bottom line, but they are usually a soggy mess.

I soak them first in a brine solution, sterilised jars etc, but?
The brine solution. I was told to use a "pickling salt", but no-one had ever heard of it at the stores I went to.

- Anyone use pickling salt, or is it bollocks?
- Do you prick the chilli with a steel skewer during this part, or when you place them in the pickling solution or at all?

I'd simply freeze them all, but with this being the season for breeding pythons too, Ive got an abundance of mice/rats in the freezer so;
- bugger all space
- a wife that gets prickly at the thought of her two most hated things clogging up the space that there is!!

Any tips related to the brine especially will be muchly regarded ;)
cheers, John
 
I have no problem finding pickling salt in my local grocery store. Its a must if you're using garlic in your pickles, at least if you don't want the garlic turning blueish.
What I always wonder about is your Aussie chicken salt?:)
 
Tooninoz, Pickling salt is recommend because it does not have iodine in it. Iodine in regular US table salt can possibly turn the item being pickled into an unsightly grey color. I used regular salt once when making a hot jelly with red onions, and some of the red onions turned slight grey. Taste was fine, but the color was off putting. If down in OZ you can not find pickling salt, a salt without iodine would prob work fine. But the reason I posted here( possibility of turning grey ) is why pickling salt is advised in many recipes.

Hope this helps you and others wondering why pickling/canning salt is recommended.
 
pssst, check the date of the OP... ;)
 
Opps :oops: :oops: :oops:

Funny thing.. it was not posted too far down, or I was reading threads on the wrong page. :crazy:

Either way.. hope the info shared still helps someone. :cheers:
 
I never knew that this was the reason for canning salt! This explains why the garlic in some refrigerator dill pickles I made recently turned blue. lol. They taste fine, though.

I did wonder why the garlic was never blue when my mother made them....
 
Smiter Q said:
Opps :oops: :oops: :oops:

Funny thing.. it was not posted too far down, or I was reading threads on the wrong page. :crazy:

Either way.. hope the info shared still helps someone. :cheers:
Click to expand...
SacFly said:
I never knew that this was the reason for canning salt! This explains why the garlic in some refrigerator dill pickles I made recently turned blue. lol. They taste fine, though.

I did wonder why the garlic was never blue when my mother made them....
Click to expand...

Well, there ya go, Smiter! Your wish is granted! (NOT BY ME!!!! just that someone got the info...)

I believe sea salt, real salt (mined from somewhere in Utah?) and kosher salt would also work for canning as they don't have the added iodine of table salt. SacFly, I'm not sure when iodine started being added to table salt, so depending on when your mum was doing the pickles, the table salt of that time might not of had iodine in it.
 
I'm not sure when iodine started being added to table salt, so depending on when your mum was doing the pickles, the table salt of that time might not of had iodine in it.
Click to expand...


Snipped from Wikipedia: In the U.S. in the early 20th century, goitre was especially prevalent in the region around the Great Lakes and the Pacific Northwest.[sup][6][/sup] David Murray Cowie, a professor of paediatrics at the University of Michigan, led the U.S. to adopt the Swiss practice of adding sodium iodide or potassium iodide to table and cooking salt. On May 1, 1924, iodised salt was sold commercially in Michigan.[sup][7][/sup] By the fall of 1924, Morton Salt Company began distributing iodised salt nationally.
 
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