Pickle Power: Exploring the Art and Science of Pickling - FussFree Science #11

Hello!

It’s been a long while since I’ve posted.

Life happened (changing work divisions, leaving my job to move the family to a new country, and starting a new role in my own business), so this got stuffed into the back burner until I had the bandwidth to restart this again.

Now that we’re back, I started looking into pickling since we’ve been eating quite a few pickles lately. So, I decided to find out more about this topic.

TL;DR

1. Pickling food is a way to preserve fresh food to last during times when fresh food is not easily available.
2. Pickling at home involves pasteurisation, adding an acid with seasoning, and refrigeration.
3. Pickling not only tastes great, but it is also beneficial for your health.

Why do we pickle?

Back in the day, before we had refrigeration, keeping food fresh was an issue. So our ancestors brined vegetables in salt and preserved vegetables and proteins for the long, cold winter months when you can’t get fresh food. And preserved food is great for long sea voyages and journeys as well. Now that we have new technology to preserve food, we pickle food for the flavour!

Personally, I love the crunchy, sour, salty flavours of pickled fruits and vegetables. And salted fish… That’s one of my family’s favourite kinds of pickled protein.

If you haven’t tried it, I highly recommend it.

How is pickling done?

The ancient way of pickling food is to dump it into a vat of brine and then let the lacto bacteria grow and ferment. This environment prevents the growth of other types of bacteria that may spoil the food (see the coming sauerkraut edition).

Currently, there are 2 methods of pickling:

1) Pasteurisation and addition of vinegar, and 2) Refrigeration and adding acid and preservatives such as sodium benzoate.

As this is part of my Kitchen Science Series, we’ll concentrate more on home methods.

This means we’ll look closer at how pickling is done by adding vinegar (method 1) or by fermentation that creates an acidic environment.

For example, to prepare pickle cucumbers, we can break this down into 3 different ways:

1. Salt stock with vinegar pickling
2. Dill pickling
3. Overnight dill pickles

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Salt stock with vinegar pickling

1. Using a salt stock solution that is 2-2.5% (w/v%), eg 2-2.5g of salt to 100ml of water
2. Add in vinegar, sugar, and other spices, bring to a boil
3. Put the cut cucumber into a glass container
4. Pour the boiling liquid into the container of cucumber
5. Let the container cool a bit before sealing.

Once the whole container is cooled, you can enjoy your pickle. This method pickles and pasturises at the same time! It’s best to let it pickle at least overnight to get the best flavour.

Dill pickling (Lacto fermentation)

1. Using a salt stock solution that is 4-5% (w/v%) that you’ve added dill, garlic and other spices that you like.
2. Pour the liquid over the container of cucumbers, making sure that everything is submerged.
3. To get the full fermentation flavour, store the pickles in a cool, dry place for 3-6 weeks.

The best temperature for this kind of fermentation is around 16-21C, which allows the right kind of fermentation bacteria to grow.

Overnight Dill pickling (not really overnight)

1. 2-4%(w/v%) salt solution with dill and garlic
2. Submerge the cucumber in pickling brine
3. Pickle for a week to get the desired acidity

I guess you use this method if you can’t wait 3-6 weeks for your pickles to be done.

Ultimately, the point of all 3 methods of pickling is to prevent the growth of bacteria that can spoil the food by creating an environment that is highly acidic, too salty, or both.

Benefits of pickling

Other than creating great-tasting food with interesting texture, there are benefits to eating pickled food.

Great for gut health

In fermented pickles, the lactic acid bacteria help your gut health by acting like probiotics. It supports the growth of the good bacteria that keep your gut microbiome balanced.

Pickling brine is great for you too

The brine is a great source of electrolytes, so it helps to rehydrate you and balance out the salt content in your body if you’ve perspired a lot on a hot day. In a pinch, drinking pickling brine can be a cheap alternative to the isotonic drinks full of sugar.

Drinking pickling brine can also help you with your hangover! I never tried this, but apparently, it works. This goes back to the previous point by helping to replenish the electrolytes that you’d have lost due to dehydration from drinking too much alcohol.

The mechanisms are still unclear, but drinking pickling brine can also help with muscle cramps.

If you do choose to drink pickling brine, keep in mind that not all brine is created equal. Lacto-fermented pickle brine is great for your gut health because of all the good bacteria swimming around.

Even vinegar-based brine can be beneficial. A small 2013 study found that 14 participants with type 2 diabetes added just a tablespoon of vinegar twice a day to their diet, which helped stabilise their blood glucose levels. However, since it’s a very small study, we’ll need more research to fully support the benefits of drinking vinegar for diabetes patients.

Reuse the remaining pickle brine

If you have leftover brine, you don’t need to dump it out. Just put in sliced onions or cucumbers, and you can reuse them for another batch of pickles! The food may not have the same intensity as the original batch, but it's good enough.

Pickling Recipe

What’s an article about pickling if no pickling recipe is shared? I use a combination of the Bon Appetite and the Joshua Weissman recipes at home, and it works well for us.

Ingredients

• 1 cup apple cider vinegar
• 2 cup water
• 2 Tbsp. sugar
• 3 tsp. sea salt
• 250g red onion, thinly sliced

1. Smoosh all your sliced onions into an appropriate-sized glass jar.
2. Put all the liquid ingredients and the seasoning into a pan and boil.
3. Pour the boiling pickling brine into the jar with the onions.
4. Carefully push down the onions to make sure that they are all submerged.
5. Wait until the jar is cool before covering it and storing it in the fridge for at least overnight.

Pickled onions are great for burgers, coleslaw, and many other foods that are enhanced by acidity and crunch.

Final thoughts

So, in this article, we’ve learnt:

1. Why we pickle - To keep things fresh and preserve them for times when fresh food is not readily available
2. How we pickle - by adding a salted vinegar solution or lacto fermentation
3. Benefits of eating pickles - tastes great, helps with electrolyte balance

Do you make your own pickles at home? If you do, reply to this email with your recipes, and I will compile them and share them in the next issue.

Let me know if you have any kitchen and food science topics you’d like to know more about, and I’ll dive deep into them.

References

1. ‘Are Pickles Good for You? Benefits of Fermented Foods’, 8 May 2019. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/325124.
2. Barrett, D. M. ‘PICKLING’. In Encyclopedia of Food Sciences and Nutrition (Second Edition), edited by Benjamin Caballero, 4563–66. Oxford: Academic Press, 2003. https://doi.org/10.1016/B0-12-227055-X/00924-X.
3. Healthline. ‘Drinking Pickle Juice: Healthy Benefits’, 3 May 2016. https://www.healthline.com/health/food-nutrition/drinking-pickle-juice.
4. How To Make Pickles Without A Recipe, 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBvr0K-6NIY. Johnston, Carol S., Samantha Quagliano, and Serena White. ‘Vinegar Ingestion at Mealtime Reduced Fasting Blood Glucose Concentrations in Healthy Adults at Risk for Type 2 Diabetes’. Journal of Functional Foods 5, no. 4 (1 October 2013): 2007–11. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jff.2013.08.003.
5. Mitrou, Panayota, Eleni Petsiou, Emilia Papakonstantinou, Eirini Maratou, Vaia Lambadiari, Panayiotis Dimitriadis, Filio Spanoudi, Sotirios A. Raptis, and George Dimitriadis. ‘Vinegar Consumption Increases Insulin-Stimulated Glucose Uptake by the Forearm Muscle in Humans with Type 2 Diabetes’. Journal of Diabetes Research 2015 (6 May 2015): e175204. https://doi.org/10.1155/2015/175204.
6. Nagpal, Ravinder, Ashwani Kumar, Manoj Kumar, Pradip V. Behare, Shalini Jain, and Hariom Yadav. ‘Probiotics, Their Health Benefits and Applications for Developing Healthier Foods: A Review’. FEMS Microbiology Letters 334, no. 1 (1 September 2012): 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1574-6968.2012.02593.x.
7. Olive My Pickle. ‘Fact or Fiction: Learn the Truth about Pickle Juice and Electrolyte Drinks’. Accessed 24 April 2024. https://www.olivemypickle.com/blogs/news/pickle-juice-myths.
8. Serious Eats. ‘Lacto-Fermented Dill Pickles Recipe’. Accessed 25 April 2024. https://www.seriouseats.com/lacto-fermented-dill-pickle-recipe.
9. ‘Quick-Pickled Red Onions RecipeBon Appétit’. Accessed 25 April 2024. https://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/quick-pickled-onions.