 Pickled products add spice and texture to meals and snacks. Pickling is one of the oldest food preservation methods, dates back to biblical times. While people often associate cucumbers with pickles, pickling in food preservation refers to increasing the acid level of foods, such as fruits and vegetables or even fish, by fermenting an assault brine or adding an acid such as vinegar. Salt and vinegar sharpen flavors as well as aid in preservation. Besides preserving nutrients, fermentation can actually increase them. I'm Julie Cascio with the Cooperative Extension Service of the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Pickles are usually grouped into one of four classes. Brined pickles are also called fermented pickles. The vegetables are usually submerged in a salt solution and allowed to ferment or cure for about three weeks. Dilled cucumbers and sauerkraut are examples of this type of pickle product. Fresh pack or quick process pickles are vegetables or fruits packed in a spicy vinegar solution. Relishes are prepared from fruits or vegetables with vinegar and seasonings and fruit pickles are prepared by heating fruits in a spicy sweet sour syrup. The key to successful pickling is to start with good ingredients. We'll examine these ingredients and the necessary equipment next. Salt brine solutions should be carefully prepared. Pure granulated salt such as canning and pickling salt should be used. Anti-caking agents and other salts may make your brine cloudy. Salt acts as a preservative and adds flavor and crispness. So don't reduce the amount of salt and don't use reduced sodium salts. Brine draws the juices and sugars from foods which forms lactic acid which acts as a preservative. Vinegar gives a tart taste and also acts as a preservative. Use a high grade cider or white distilled vinegar with 5% acidity. Check your label. White vinegar is especially suggested for white foods such as cauliflower as cider vinegar tends to darken the products and make them less attractive. Never reduce the amount of vinegar in a recipe as this lessens the acidity of the pickle. If a less sour product is desired, add sugar rather than decreasing the vinegar. Use white granulated sugar unless the recipe calls for a different sweetener. Brown sugar darkens the product. Make sure spices and herbs are fresh. Use whole spices as ground spices make cloud the pickling mixture. For best flavor, spices and herbs should be no older than 18 months. Since spices lose their flavor with heat and humidity, they should be stored in a cool, dark place. Taste before using them to make sure the flavors are fresh and strong. Another consideration is soft water. Soft water should be used in making brine. The minerals and hard water will affect the quality of the pickle. If soft water is not available, boil water for 15 minutes then let it stand for 24 hours. Carefully skim off any scum that appears and then ladle the rest of the water out of the container being careful not to disturb the sediment at the bottom. That will give you some soft water to use. Some older pickle recipes call for firming agents such as alum or lime to add crispness to pickles. However, when the fruits or vegetables are fresh and the proper ingredients are used, these items are not necessary. Now let's look at some equipment. Basic equipment needed for pickling includes a pot to heat the pickling liquids. Use unshipped enamelware, stainless steel or non-stick coated materials. Do not use aluminum, copper, brass, galvanized or iron utensils. For fermenting or brining, use a food grade crock, plastic container, or large glass jar or bowl. Use a large food grade plastic bag filled with water or brine to hold the vegetables below the surface of the brine. Household scales are needed if recipes specify ingredients by weight. Scales are used to ensure that the correct proportions of ingredients are included. Also needed are measuring cups and spoons, sharp knives and a cutting board, tongs, vegetable peeler, slotted spoon, ladle, canning funnel, canning jars, lids and rings, a jar lifter, a plastic knife or rubber spatula for getting the air bubbles out of the canning jar, a colander, and a water bath canner. Having the proper equipment gathered will make the pickling process a breeze. Fresh pack or quick process pickles are made by pouring a pickling brine over vegetables and processing. Some are brined several hours or overnight, then drained and covered with vinegar and seasonings. The pickled green beans recipe used in this module is from So Easy to Preserve. This publication is available at your local extension office. For this recipe, you will need two pounds of green beans, one teaspoon cayenne pepper, four heads of dill or four teaspoons of dill, seed, four cloves of garlic, two and a half cups of water, two and a half cups of vinegar, this is only two cups, we need to add another half cup, and one quarter cup canning or pickling salt. The first step in the process is to sterilize the canning jars. Products that are processed less than 10 minutes, which these are, must be packed in sterilized jars. To sterilize your jars, boil your water and your jars together in the water bath canner for 10 minutes. Then also you need to prepare your lids according to the manufacturer's directions. Our jars have been boiled for 10 minutes, they are being kept hot in the water bath canner until we're ready for them. You can also prepare your brine, which we've done by combining the water, the vinegar and the salt and bringing it to a boil. You need to wash your green beans before you begin, which we have done, and then trim off your ends. And cut them into four inch lengths, which are the size of the jars. Leaving a quarter, excuse me, a half inch for head space. We want to pack our green beans into our jars tightly, and the jars are hot, so sometimes tipping the jars on the side helps to get those green beans in there more easily. Packing them in snugly is important because when you add your brine, if the green beans are not snugly fitted into the jar, they will float to the top. And I can see that we need to adjust these just a little bit. We have to work quickly, and this is where I sometimes have my downfall. If I'm not working quickly enough, my jar gets too cold. At the end, sometimes you have to cut pieces so they fit in the jar, and then you have these little partial strips of green bean. So at the end, you can use your extra brine and your extra green beans and make a jar using the small pieces of green bean. We want to have a half inch head space in our jar. Head space is important so that the brine doesn't boil over during the processing and interfere with the sealing of the lids. We're going to take our boiled brine and pour it into our jars. I like to use a funnel because then the brine tends to end up in my jar rather than on my counter. And we're going to add our spices to the jar now. Use a quarter teaspoon cayenne. This can be varied according to your taste or your family's taste. One clove of garlic and one teaspoon dill seed, or if you have a head of dill, you can just add one head of dill in there. We use our plastic knife or spatula to go around the edge of the beans in the jar to rearrange them a little bit. That will release any air bubbles that might be inside the jar. Then wipe off the rim of the jar with a paper towel or cloth. Take your softened lids and add that to the jar rim with a ring. Tightening the ring and then backing it off a quarter of a turn. Now it's ready to put into our boiling water in our water bath canner. We're going to process this for five minutes. Let the beans, after they have sealed, stand for at least two weeks before tasting them. This allows your flavors to develop. Enjoy your dilly beans. The green bean pickle is an example of a fresh pack pickle. This recipe is for fermented dill pickles. You will need four pounds of four inch pickling cucumbers, two tablespoons dill seed, or four to five heads of fresh dill, one half cup canning and pickling salt, one quarter cup vinegar, which has five percent acidity in it, and eight cups of water. Optional ingredients include two cloves of garlic and two teaspoons of whole mixed pickling spices. Wash your cucumbers thoroughly. It's important to use a vegetable brush to ensure they are completely clean. You'll notice the irregular surface of the pickling cucumbers makes it important that they're scrubbed well. Then after they are, rinse them and drain them on a rack. Put one sixteenth of an inch off the blossom end of the cucumber. The blossom end looks like this. This is where the blossom has dried after it's been picked, and you'll notice this one is also the blossom end, but there's no blossom on it. The other end of the cucumber is the stem end, and it's okay to leave a little bit of that stem on there. These blossom ends are the source of enzymes that may make your pickle soft. The container used for fermenting must be large enough to allow several inches of space above the top of the food. In general, a one gallon container is needed for five pounds of vegetables. We've already started by putting one batch of four pounds of cucumbers in the bottom of this container. So on top of that, we're going to add half of the spices for our recipe. That includes one tablespoon of dill seed, one teaspoon of mixed pickling spice, and one clove of garlic. We'll pour the cucumbers in, and we're going to add the remaining spices. Another tablespoon of dill seed, one teaspoon of mixed pickling spice, and one clove of garlic. For the brine, we're going to dissolve one half cup of salt in one quarter cup of vinegar, and stir in eight cups of water. Using canning and pickling salt helps to keep your brine clear. And of course, you're going to dissolve your salt completely. When it's dissolved, it looks good. We're going to pour this over the pickles and cucumbers and the spices. Sometimes you need additional brine to make sure that there's at least one to two inches of brine on top of the pickles. Let's check this out. And I do have some additional brine mixed because that doesn't look like quite enough. And we need to weight down this flat, in this instance, square, but it could be a disc if you had a round container. And we're placing jars filled with water on top of the vegetable. That looks good. If it starts floating up, then you know that you need more weights to keep it down. Alternately, you can use a bag filled with brine, the same brine that we poured over the cucumbers. You do that just in case the bag breaks. Store this container where temperatures are 70 to 75 degrees Fahrenheit for three to four weeks while fermenting. Lower temperatures will slow the process. Higher temperatures may result in soft pickles. During the fermentation process, check your brine every couple of days. If scum or mold forms, skim it off and discard it. Once fermentation is complete, pickles may be stored in the original fermentation container in the refrigerator. If you don't have enough room in your refrigerator for that, another way to store them is by preserving with the water bath canning process. To process, drain the brine from the pickles and place it in a pan. Heat slowly to a boil and simmer for five minutes. If the brine is cloudy, drain it through a paper coffee filter. Process pint jars for 10 minutes in a water bath canner. And if you aren't familiar with using a water bath canner, refer to your extension module on using a water bath canner. Pickles and relishes are high acid products. The large amount of vinegar adds acid to quick process pickles. In fermented pickles, lactic acid is produced during the fermenting process because they are high acid products, pickles are canned in a water bath canner. Processing is necessary to destroy yeasts, molds, and bacteria that may cause spoilage and to kill enzymes that affect the color, flavor, and texture of pickles. When you're ready to store the finished product, label and date sealed jars, then store in a cool, dry, dark place. Most pickles will taste better if allowed to develop flavor from two to four weeks. Always use approved recipes for pickles to ensure proper proportions of vinegar and salt are used. If you are watching your salt intake, there are low sodium pickle recipes available. Call your local extension office for these special recipes and for additional processing information. Remember, the Cooperative Extension Service is available for any questions you might have about any food processing techniques. Happy Pickling!