Tips for Making Crunchy Homemade Pickles
— By Kate McCarty, Food Systems Professional, University of Maine Cooperative Extension
It’s green bean and cucumber season here in Maine, and pickling is my favorite way to preserve these vegetables. I always can a batch of crunchy dilly beans and sweet bread-and-butter pickles to enjoy throughout the year. But every year, I hear from other canners who find their homemade pickles less crisp than the ones they buy at the store. They’re understandably disappointed that all that work resulted in a pickle that’s a little mushy.
So I put together a few tips for making sure your home-canned cucumber pickles turn out crunchy, delicious, and most importantly—safe! With this advice, you’ll be ready to make homemade pickles all summer long, whether that’s traditional dill pickles or other pickled vegetables like beets, carrots, and even Brussels sprouts. Happy pickling!
1. Use the right cucumber variety.
Pickling cucumbers, as the name implies, are the best variety to use when making pickles. These cukes have a thicker skin and less water in the flesh which helps them stand up better to the heat of the boiling water bath canner. Using a salad or slicing cucumber variety could result in mushy pickles. So save those cucumbers for fresh eating and use pickling cucumbers for pickles.
Using fresh cucumbers will make a difference too. Ideally, pickles are made from cucumbers within 24 hours of harvesting. If you’re the one picking the cucumbers, harvest them in the morning (avoid picking during the heat of the day) and refrigerate cucumbers immediately after picking or buying them. If you buy cucumbers at the market, plan to pickle them that same day.
2. Remove the blossom end of the cucumber.
Removing the end of the cucumber where the flower grew will help your pickles stay crispy. This flower scar can trap an enzyme that will cause pickles to soften as they sit in storage. Simply slicing off a little sliver (only 1/16 of an inch) of the blossom end will remove these enzymes and help maintain crispness. If you’re not sure which end is the flower end and which end is the stem end, trim them both.
Some recipes, like those for pickle chips or relish, will have you salt, soak, or ice your cucumbers before you begin your recipe. These steps are aimed at increasing crispness, so you shouldn’t skip them.
3. Use a crisping treatment.
Adding a crisping treatment like calcium chloride to your jars will help keep your pickles crispy. These granules are sold by brands like Ball or Mrs. Wages, and a small amount is added directly to each jar of pickles. Calcium chloride maintains the natural pectin in the vegetables, keeping them firm. It’s important to start with fresh, quality produce, since crisping treatments do not add pectin, only maintain what’s already there.
We have tested calcium chloride by making a batch of pickles and adding it to half of the jars and leaving it out of the others. When we did a taste test months later, the jars with Pickle Crisp added were noticeably crispier. Refrigerating your pickles before you serve them will also help improve the texture.
Older crisping treatments like alum and pickling lime are no longer recommended. Alum has no effect on the crispness of quick-pickled products (i.e., pickles made with added vinegar), and pickling lime can decrease the pH of the pickles to an unsafe level if not used properly. Instead, we recommend using high-quality ingredients and up-to-date methods to achieve crunchy pickles.
4. Use the right ingredients: salt, vinegar, spices.
Using the wrong ingredients when pickling can result in pickles that are discolored, shriveled, cloudy, bitter, and potentially unsafe to eat. So make sure you start off on the right foot by choosing the recommended salt, vinegar, and form of spices when you’re pickling.
Pickling and canning salt is recommended when making pickles, since it has no additives. Other salts have anti-caking agents or iodine which can cause your pickles to darken or create white sediment in the jars. Pickling and canning salt is found where canning supplies are sold or with the salt at the grocery store.
Vinegar should be 5% acidity. This ensures the safety of your pickles, as using a vinegar that is too weak can result in a food with a pH that is not safe to can. Simply check the label to ensure that it says “diluted to 5% acidity” when you buy your vinegar, and do not use homemade vinegar, as the acidity of homemade vinegars can vary.
And finally spices—typically whole dried spices are recommended, primarily for appearance. Ground spices can make your pickle brine look cloudy. Follow the recipe’s instructions for what type of spice to use. If you want to skip a spice (like crushed red pepper), know that the spices are added for flavor and leaving one out will not affect the safety of your recipe.
5. Consider making refrigerator pickles!
If you’ve tried all our tips and still aren’t happy with how your homemade pickles are turning out, perhaps you’d rather make refrigerator pickles. These pickles aren’t canned, so they aren’t shelf-stable and don’t last as long as processed pickles, but they stay super crunchy because they aren’t heat-treated.
We developed a recipe for refrigerator pickles that makes two pint jars. You can also make any pickle recipe that was designed for canning and instead store it in the refrigerator for up to one month (you’ll probably want to half the recipe so you have a reasonable amount of refrigerator pickles). You can use whatever assorted vegetables you like from the garden or the farmers’ market.
With these tips, you’re on the path to crispy homemade pickles. Good luck!
No endorsement of products or companies is intended, nor is criticism of unnamed products or companies implied.