Three Secrets To Crispy Pickles, And A 'Lost Recipe' Found (2024)

FAQs

How to can pickles and keep them crisp? ›

Soak Cucumbers In Ice Water Beforehand

If you're not canning your cucumbers immediately, leave them in an ice bath or in your refrigerator overnight to maintain firmness. Doing this before you start canning them will give you the crunchiest pickles you've ever had!

Depending upon the quality of the cucumbers, recipe, and pickle maker, firming agents may or may not be part of the process. Firming agents include alum, food grade lime (calcium hydroxide), grape leaves, or calcium chloride (Ball Pickle Crisp® or Mrs. Wages Xtra-Crunch®).

If the pickles are soft, they are spoiled from the yeast fermentation. Don't use them. Using too weak a salt brine or vinegar solution may cause soft or slippery pickles, as can using moldy garlic or storing the pickles at too warm a temperature.

Ball Pickle Crisp Granules are easy to use for crispier homemade pickles. Just measure and add to the jar, replacing pickling lime and the need for time-consuming pre-soak.

Mineral Rich Salt

Salt hardens the pectins in vegetables and this is what makes them crisp. Without enough salt, your vegetables, and especially pickles, will be soft and mushy. Pickles need more salt than my other cultured vegetables to keep them crisper.

Air fry the pickles for three to four minutes, but always be attentive as the size and thickness of your pickles and varying air fryer models can alter the ideal reheating time. After this period, gently shake the basket or use a pair of tongs to flip the pickles and continue frying for a similar duration.

If good quality ingredients are used and up-to-date methods are followed, firming agents are not needed. Alum has little crispness affect on quick-process pickles. Alum will increase firmness of fermented pickles when used at levels up to ¼ teaspoon per pint, but greater amounts will decrease firmness.

Alum, short for aluminum sulfate, is used in pickling to promote crisp texture and is approved, though not recommended, as a food additive by the United States Food and Drug Administration.

Use An Ice Water Bath

One of the best ways to prepare crispy pickles is to soak your cucumbers in an ice water bath for nearly five hours before starting the pickling process. Place water and ice in a large container and add the clean pickling cucumbers into it, letting them soak.

Pickle Crisp is pure Calcium Chloride with nothing else added. Here's the usage directions. Note that they are clear that just is just a crisper, and that you should in no way think that Pickle Crisp aids in proper preservation of your food products: responsibility for that is still on your shoulders!

Why do you soak cucumbers in ice water before pickling? ›

Better yet, grow them in the garden and ferment the day you pick them! Tasting the stem end can give you a sense of whether the pickle will be bitter since that's the end where bitterness concentrates. Soaking your cucumbers in ice water 30-60 minutes before fermenting seems to help keep crispness.

The best way to keep your pickles crisp is by taking an extra moment to remove the blossom from the end of the cucumber. By adding this extra cut, you have a crisper pickle. Other ways to ensure a crisp pickle is by adding grape leaves to your jar. I tend to cut off both ends of the cucumber as I quickly process them.

Using tea leaves isn't the only way to get a crunchy pickle. You can use a fresh grape leaf, oak leaves or horseradish leaves too.

HACK: Another mind-blowing tip I learned here was to add a black tea bag to each quart jar. (Don't remove the casing, just throw the whole bag in). The tannins in the black tea will help the pickles stay crisp. Unlike with canning recipes, you don't need to worry about pH levels and straying from a recipe here.

One of the most significant advantages of using cream of tartar in pickling is its ability to maintain the crispness of the fruits or vegetables being pickled. This is especially crucial for pickles like cucumber and green beans, where texture is an essential aspect of their appeal.

Pickle Crisp helps keep pickles firm because the calcium helps firm the pectin in the cucumber, the same way lime does.