Pickling question

[Rhodie Ranch]

I've put peeled tomatoes in the dill juice. Yummy!

 

[AMKuska]

I actually make and love pickled eggs! Never had a pickled beet though. In fact, I've never eaten a beet.

We'd better boil it to sterilize. I have a 7 year old who raids the pickle jar regularly. I can't imagine him stopping to get a silly old thing like a fork.

 

[flowerbug]

a lot of people make this mistake.

boiling does not sterilize.

^ read it again ^

if you want sterile you need high pressure at certain temperatures for a period of time. open air boiling does not accomplish this (and if you are any distance above sea level this is even less effective).

the pH issue is the significant factor in making many pickled things. botulism is a risk for anything that is not sufficiently acidic. this varies by product/methods/ingredients.

the nice thing with many vegetables is that they come along with lactobacillus (bacteria which give off lactic acid). these are what are often used in yogurts, but also are common in saurkraut or naturally fermented pickles (note that yeast fermenting for alcohol or raising bread is a different kind of fermentation and uses a whole different organism ).

 

[Ridgerunner]

Boiling at atmospheric pressure may not kill absolutely everything but it will kill a lot of mold spores and other things, including some kinds of bacteria. Acidity does not kill all mold spores, many thrive well below a pH of 4. The benefit to boiling the liquid before using it is to kill whatever is in the liquid that can be killed by boiling. Since some of the things acidity doesn't protect against are killed by boiling the liquid i think it is a great common sense step to take.

 

[aftermidnight]

Ridge, yes 24 hours gave them enough time to give them the flavor I like. After two days the texture changes and gets more rubbery. At the pub by the end of the evening the 4 dozen eggs had pretty much disappeared .

 

[flowerbug]

Boiling at atmospheric pressure may not kill absolutely everything but it will kill a lot of mold spores and other things, including some kinds of bacteria. Acidity does not kill all mold spores, many thrive well below a pH of 4. The benefit to boiling the liquid before using it is to kill whatever is in the liquid that can be killed by boiling. Since some of the things acidity doesn't protect against are killed by boiling the liquid i think it is a great common sense step to take.

it is common sense, but when people use that and don't actually know what is going on they make the fatal mistake and die by botulism poisoning.

i do bring all the acidic brines i use in making pickles to a boil, but i'm under no illusions that that is enough for all things (larger chunked items can be trouble is
just one example).

i make a point of not doing any low acid canning. if i were going to do a lot of that sort of thing i'd be investing in and studying how to use a pressure canner.

i'd rather be explicit and avoid someone getting sick. all of this topic is worthy of studying if you are going to can.

 

[AMKuska]

This is an absolutely fascinating discussion. Does anyone have an example of what molds or bacteria can survive boiling? Besides botulism of course.

 

[flowerbug]

This is an absolutely fascinating discussion. Does anyone have an example of what molds or bacteria can survive boiling? Besides botulism of course.

at present the only one i am concerned about is botulism because it is so prevalent, has such nasty effects and is hard to detect.

because we don't do low acid anything here i have seen very little spoilage. the times when we've had jars go bad i knew why and it wasn't fungi/bacteria aside from the fact that the food was not prepped properly (a bad tomato year we had one season) or the seal failed (very very few as i normally would catch them and redo them or just save those jars in the fridge and eat them right away).

we don't keep jars around past a few years. most we end up giving away and people keep asking us for more if we ever have them. i write the year and lot number on every lid so they can be tracked back to our records of what we produced.

if i were seeing any trends in what is going bad here i'd be looking into it. so far we see a very low failure/loss rate from all causes (including spoilage and jars breaking). i'd say over the last 10yrs it is probably less than 10 quarts total probably closer to 5-6. i should be writing them down each time to be sure i'm not forgetting things as i get older... hahaha... ok, a good thing to remember for the coming years. keep track of all failures and why...

 

[Ridgerunner]

This is an absolutely fascinating discussion. Does anyone have an example of what molds or bacteria can survive boiling? Besides botulism of course.

No, I don't have any other examples besides botulism. As strong as life is I'd think there are some but boiling kills a lot of bacteria and mold spores.

You might look at it this way. If you are stranded without good water a way to make water safer to drink is to boil it. Boiling may not totally remove everything but it is a lot safer than drinking water not boiled.

 

[AMKuska]

Yes, we're sometimes asked to boil water during emergencies so that makes sense. I'll dig around and see what I can find.