If the number of web sites offering “gourmet” or “value-added” gift hampers is any indication, a lot of preserved food will be exchanged during this holiday season; I had no idea how much a pint of piccalilli was worth.
Even for those who shun the idea of presents at Christmas, food may be the exception, especially food preserved from ones own garden. You might say a jar of Grandma’s piccalilli has value(s) added. My wife’s handed-down copy of The Wise Encyclopedia of Cookery, dated 1949, states that, “Few pickles can be successfully made in a hurry, their preparation requires care, patience, and good judgment.”
Exchanging gifts at Christmastime is a tradition at our house and homegrown food is quite often the gift of choice, both for the giver and the receiver. The safety of the food can not be an issue.
The National Center for Home Food Preservation warns that canning is a science, while cooking is an art. I am no cook and don't wear a lab coat but a gardener has to be a little of both. Checking the pantry, I find pickles of all sorts; pickled cucumbers, pickled beans, pickled cauliflower, pickled beets and pickled peppers, some of which will become gifts for friends and relatives. Grandpa Whalen would say, “Anything is good pickled,” meaning more than the perky taste of his favorite, pickled polish sausage; he meant safe to eat.
I rearrange the jars, making room for tonight’s additions of pickled green cherry tomatoes and find a pint of something gray, perhaps rhubarb sauce? There is no label, no date; I set it aside. Several quarts of pickled beets are marked 1999; I wouldn’t give them as gifts but are they safe to eat? I know just enough about the science behind the pickling process to question the safety of old food, old recipes and old advice; and sometimes new advice.
In my dog-eared copy of The Manual of Practical Homesteading, John Vivian writes, “The problem most folks have making pickles is that they try to get too complicated.” Mr. Vivian believes pickles are made to be eaten, “… you can't can for posterity; fresh produce declines in taste, not to mention vitamin and mineral content, if saved much beyond six months in home storage of any kind.” Grandpa taught me to like pickles but John taught me how to pickle.
There are two general types of pickles; fresh-pack, or quick-process pickled vegetables are packed in jars, covered with a hot vinegar solution and canned. I use this method most often.
Other pickled products, such as genuine dills or sauerkraut are cured and fermented. Both methods use an acid to create an environment unsuitable for the growth of certain microorganisms. The pickle brine doesn't act by killing bacteria the way canning does; it controls them, like hand-picking weeds versus spraying them with herbicide.
A teaspoon of productive garden soil can contain from 100 million to 1 billion bacteria, some good, some bad and some real ugly. Some of them will certainly hitch a ride on your cucumber or cabbage, right into your kitchen. Control starts by eliminating the most likely hiding places; clinging soil, outer leaves, blossoms.
Most bacteria, yeasts, and molds are difficult to remove from food surfaces. Washing reduces their numbers slightly. Peeling root crops, underground stem crops, and tomatoes reduces their numbers greatly. Pickling eliminates the ugliest ones completely when done correctly.
Micro-organisms can grow and multiply only within a certain pH range. Vinegar (acetic acid) or lactic acid (created by fermentation) effectively prevents the growth of the most harmful pathogens.
Guidelines for home canning were updated in the late 1980s, reviewed and revised several times since. Current USDA publications on pickling warn to never alter the proportions of vinegar, food or water in a recipe. According to those new guidelines, safe (pickle) recipes are considered those tested and published by USDA, available through local cooperative extension offices. Many of these offices now publish the guidelines, information on pickling and other methods of food preservation, and some recipes on the internet.
Don't throw away Great Aunt Martha’s cookbook yet. One extension office website insists that any canning recipe older than 1990 is no longer safe to use; yet another adds, almost as a footnote, “Also those recipes having at least one part vinegar to one part water ratio are safe,” referring to those of course, that use vinegar as the acid. What about fermented pickled products?
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) reports that since 1973, the number of reported outbreaks of foodborne illness associated with produce has more than doubled but admits it is rare that brined or fermented products are unsafe. They do warn that natural (wild) fermentation may not eradicate E. Coli and recommend the use of a starter culture.
I follow most of the guidelines and recommendations, trusting science to make my pickled gifts safe. I also questioned the sanity of many of those same scientists when, while updating my canning notes I read a 1994 report entitled, Foodborne Pathogens: Risks and Consequences, published by the Council for Agricultural Science and Technology (CAST), stating that, “Fruits and vegetables contain naturally occurring toxins. Eliminating the stress through the use of herbicides, pesticides, etc., can help reduce the natural toxins a plant produces.”
Maybe you can’t can for posterity but you can preserve the past; pickle a present for someone special in your life.
The USDA Federal Safety Guidelines on pickling
Pickling Vegetables
Approximate pH of Foods and Food Products
For a more thorough description of the individual bacteria responsible for food spoilage:
Food Poisoning, Micro-Organisms