On 6/18/2013 3:49 PM, Mark Curry wrote:
> Hi all - regular lurker here with a question.
>
> Last year took I took a dive into making various pickles with mostly
> success. Dilled Carrots, Olive Oil Pickles, and a few quick pickles
> were a great hit.
>
> The Half-Sours that I tried tasted ok, but were mushy.
> Most are still sitting in the fridge waiting some kind of
> use as a relish or chutney, where the texture won't be noticed.
Fermented pickles don't do well at all with Pickle Crisp Mark, PC is
primarily for making fresh pickles and, even then, they need to sit in a
dark place for a few weeks in order to be crisp.
>
> Found out about Pickle Crisp in this newsgroup, and want to
> give it a try. I'm not sure on the use for fermented pickles
> however - should I add the Pickle Crisp before fermentation or
> after? It's just another salt, so I think it shouldn't affect
> the fermentation too much. The package doesn't help much.
> Most of the recipes I'm using are from The Joy of Pickling
> by Linda Ziedrich
Pickle Crisp is calcium chloride and, if I remember correctly, is made
by treating limestone, in the instance I'm aware of it was Texas caliche
rock, of which we Texans have a lot of. Primary use for calcium chloride
is for road "salt." A road salt that doesn't rust your car out. Jarden
(Ball) dropped the PC for awhile but brought it back in a more efficient
form, larger pieces.

>
> Looking for suggestions from the more experienced folks here.

>
> The garden just gave us about 5 lbs of cukes - kids can only
> eat soo many fresh. There's a few quarts worth ready to go...
>
> Thanks,
>
> Mark
>
>
Best advice I can give you for fermented pickles is to keep them in ice
water, very near freezing for a lengthy time and then ferment them. Lots
of recipes for fermented pickles on the web and how to keep them crisp.
Hope this helps.

George

I thought I had sent this earlier but never saw it show up.