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Joe Friday posted:Well, making fermented items is a bit different then the "fresh pack" method of using fresh vegetables in brine and canning them up. I think your process for pickled limes should be fine, just change the long term storage method. If you want them to be shelf-stable, use canning jars and process them in a canner. If you have the space and don't plan on submitting them to the actual canning process, just use any clean, sterile jar and stash them in the fridge. This is really late, but with regards to the pickled limes there's no way you're going to get botulism growing inside that environment. It's basically acid and salt, the pH is waaaaay too low for the spores to survive, and the salinity level takes care of almost anything else. Not to mention all fermentation-based pickling depends on an anaerobic environment for the bacteria to do their thing, they do not produce lactic acids in any meaningful amounts in an aerobic environment, period. The reason lactobacteria do a great job of keeping nasty bacteria out is because they produce a shitload of lactic acid to drop the pH of their environment down far enough to kill their competition as quick as they can. If all you needed for botulism was an anaerobic environment, every culture that depended on pickled foods would have disappeared long ago from mass botulism poisoning. Good-bye India, Germany(okay East Europe too), and Korea. For that matter, beer probably wouldn't exist either since yeast only produce alcohol in an anaerobic environment(yes wort is slightly acidic but I'm sure there is enough variation in acid tolerance for spores to conceivably survive and multiply if they were to make it in there). C. botulinum basically depends on having an anaerobic environment, salinity that's not too too high, and a very close to neutral pH to survive. That's why making your own garlic-infused oil is a bad idea(as has been iterated in this and other threads before); garlic hosts a lot of C. botulinum, and when you infuse garlic into the oil you simultaneously remove an aerobic environment and remove any way for salinity or acidity to make it into the mix, while providing it with a wide variety of food sources and drastically reduce its competition by pasteurizing without pressure-canner levels of heat. (god I hope PretentiousFood does a full-on sperg-level post about pH, salinity, and things like how they affect species-specific bacterial growth curves/etc. It would be glorious.) Going back to the limes, even the fermentation bacteria that go to work on them take nearly a month to get going, there's barely anything that can withstand the level of salinity and acidity going on in that jar. It's definitely shelf-stable on its own, your colors will fade but the longer it sits the better it tastes; I'm still eating on a big jar I made roughly 2 years ago. I do recommend fitting the jar's lid on loosely after you cover everything with oil to keep any dust out. Those limes are amazing chopped up fine and tossed onto tacos and basically anything Mexican, or tossed into the blender when you're making smooth salsa. They amp up the bright lime flavor really well. Also fantastic for marinades, you get a big punch of lime flavor in small packages. e: also sauerkraut is shelf-stable so long as you keep the kraut submersed. If you let the cabbage touch air then there will be spoilage, but otherwise it's got a shelf-life comparable to Twinkies. Kilersquirrel fucked around with this message at 18:26 on Feb 1, 2012 |
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Feb 1, 2012 18:23
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Amber Sweet posted:Thanks A somewhat unorthodox method to check your pH could be to buy a soil pH tester and use it to check the acidity of your sauce pre-canning. Decent ones are usually accurate to 0.1 and nice ones can be accurate to 0.01 without going into lab equipment price ranges. Although when in doubt and a recipe involves garlic, pressure can. Or toss in some citric acid to drop pH without adding unwanted flavors.
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Jan 11, 2013 07:36
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Canning it isn't a necessity, I'm giving some out as Christmas presents so I wanted it to be able to stay good if they don't get around to opening it for a while, and so I can make it a but further in advance (like now), instead of waiting until a few days before Christmas.
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Bunnita posted:Mine boils water incredibly quickly but it's induction so these huge aluminum pots aren't going to work. I can't find anything big in an 'induction friendly' metal, and I'd love a pressure canner but again, nothing that isn't aluminum. This is starting to be a good argument against induction =( Find a metal shop and buy a chunk of iron or steel big enough to sit your pot on and 1/4-1/2 inch thick, then sand/polish it nice and smooth(or buy it prepolished, so long as it's smooth in the end). Aluminum is a great heat conductor and will heat up quickly along with the iron, and keeping your heat plate on the thinner side will help keep the responsiveness of the element on the gas side of the "gas burner > electric range" spectrum of heat control(a thicker plate will soak up more heat and radiate it back out when the power is off). Not a perfect solution, but if you want to use nonferrous metals on an induction range you'll have to make a compromise now and then.
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Jun 16, 2013 08:36
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