Putting Food By - Janet Greene [149]
The interim day before storing in a cool, dry, dark place is the only time that these foods can be salvaged by repacking in sterilized containers and processing over again from scratch.
If, after these foods are checked and put in the storage area, you find any of the following, DESTROY THE CONTENTS SO THAT THEY CANNOT BE EATEN BY PEOPLE OR ANIMALS; then deal with the containers as described in Chapter 6, “The Canning Methods.”
• Broken seal.
• Seepage around the seal, even though it seems firmly seated.
• Mold, even a fleck, in the contents or around the seal or on the underside of the lid.
• Gassiness (small bubbles) in the contents.
• Spurting liquid, pressure from inside as the jar is opened.
• Mushy or slippery pickles.
• Cloudy or yeasty liquid.
• Off-odor, disagreeable smell, mustiness.
If this strict, it’s meant to. Our most shiver-producing bedside reading is not a favorite Elmore Leonard tale but the cumulative statistics on outbreaks of botulism in the United States, published regularly by the Center for Disease Control of the U.S. Public Health Service. Surprisingly to a layman, condiments—including home-canned tomato relish, chili sauce, and pickles—have been found to contain C. botulinum toxin. Maybe the product was not truly pickled, because the recipe was altered—perhaps by cutting down on the vinegar to reduce tartness, rather than by increasing the sweetener to achieve a result more bland. Or, as has been described in Chapter 8, “Canning Tomatoes,” unclean handling or faulty processing allowed spoilage that reduced the acidity of the food, and thus in turn the botulinum spores could grow.
In addition to the sloppy treatment noted above, warm storage conditions contribute to such spoilage. As does the old “open-kettle” canning method now in disrepute.
Often, low-acid vegetables are spoiled by the scum that naturally forms on top of the fermentation brine; the scum should be removed faithfully. And it is not only the top layer of pickles that is affected, for the scum (which contains wild yeasts, molds, and bacteria) can weaken the acidity of the brine.
Also, hard water that contains a great deal of calcium salts can counteract some of the acid, or keep acid from forming well enough during brining, and thus interfere with the process that is meant to make certain pickles safe with an otherwise adequate water bath.
And of course “knife out” air bubbles before capping.
Warning about measurements: The critical ingredient is the vinegar in pickled products or tart relishes, and this is easy to measure. But proportions can be thrown off by how chunky ingredients are measured: for example, ¾-inch cubes of vegetables should be measured by the quart—not by 4 separate level cupfuls—and be rounded: this rounding compensates for the wasted space in the container. On the other hand, shredded cabbage is pressed down to the rim of the measuring cup (but not down to the cup-mark slightly below the rim) if you are using a liquid measure.
Not Perfect, but Edible
If jars have good seals, if there are none of the signs of spoilage noted above, and if the storage has been properly cool, you can have less-than-perfect pickles that are still OK to eat.
Hollow pickles. The cucumbers just developed queerly on the vine; you can spot these odd ones when you wash them: usually they float. So use them chopped in relishes. Or they stood around more than 24 hours after being picked. If you can’t get around to doing them the day you get them, refrigerate.
Shriveled pickles. This can come from plunging the cucumbers into a solution of salt, vinegar, or sugar that’s too strong for them to absorb in one session (here’s the reason why some recipes handle pickles in stages). Or they’ve cooked too fast in a sugar-vinegar