Help me pickle my turnips

September 6, 2011 10:29 PM

Looking for a recipe for fresh-pack turnip pickles designed for hot water processing.

All the turnip pickle recipes I've found seem to think I want to make refrigerator pickles. Or ferment them and then store them in the refrigerator. I just want a recipe that wants me to pour hot vinegar brine over the vegetables and then process them.

Can I take a refrigerator pickle recipe and just process it?

Bonus: does anyone have a source for pickle chemistry? Many recipes from extension offices and the National Center for Home Preservation, etc., have dire warnings that say you shouldn't change anything from these special tested recipes, etc. But it seems like there should be a formula: so much water and salt to so much vinegar to preserve a certain weight of vegetables, but it shouldn't matter so much what kind of vegetable...but I'm a little nervous just to take, say, a radish pickle recipe and substitute turnips!

posted by leahwrenn to Food & Drink (3 answers total)

If you'd like to do a raw pack, the biggest issue is going to be acidity. You'll need either vinegar or bottled lemon juice (fresh juice isn't that easy to judge the acidity of). A pH of 4.6 or less should keep you and your turnips safe. Turnips tend to be fairly sweet, so if you want to be totally careful, which I would suggest you do, you can always buy pH test strips at the hardware or garden store to check your brine. Raw packs are a little different than veggies you boil the hell out of, especially if you're going to do a water bath. Not to say that I'm discouraging you; I raw-packed about 20# of tomatoes last year, and we're still pulling them out of the pantry.
posted by Gilbert at 11:07 PM on September 6, 2011

But it seems like there should be a formula: so much water and salt to so much vinegar to preserve a certain weight of vegetables, but it shouldn't matter so much what kind of vegetable...but I'm a little nervous just to take, say, a radish pickle recipe and substitute turnips!

There is actually a formula for preserving low-acid foods in vinegar via hot water bath. First off, use only vinegar of 5% (or higher) acidity. Pretty much all white vinegars I've ever sent are diluted to 5%. Processed (i.e., not 'raw') apple cider vinegars are as well. (You'll want to stay away from Bragg's or other natural vinegars containing the mother.) Second, your brine must consist of at least 50% vinegar to water. It can have a higher percentage of vinegar, but must always be at least 1:1 vinegar to water.

When pickling in vinegar, salt is a flavoring agent, not a preservative, so salt to taste. It's best to use pickling salt; it dissolves easier.

You probably don't want to process a refrigerator pickle recipe. You won't make it unsafe, but you will make the vegetables mushy. A better practice would be to treat the turnips like the cukes that go into bread-and-butter pickles. They're salted and soaked in ice water for a couple hours before they go into the brine and the processor. You can also buy a product called Pickle Crisp. It's calcium chloride. You add a little bit to the jars before processing and it does really help keep the vegetables from going mushy.

I'm fairly certain there's a turnip recipe in The Joy of Pickling (a great book!). I'll check when I get home and will post if there is one.
posted by mudpuppie at 4:08 PM on September 7, 2011

Joy of Pickling has a couple of refrigerator turnip pickles, one preserved in miso, and one that's fermented. If you want any of those recipes, let me know.

Meantime, here's one I found online that uses a water bath and backs me up on soaking/icing the turnips before processing. I'd caution against slicing the turnips 'thin,' as the recipe states. I'd go for the thickness of plain old sandwich pickles, no thinner.
posted by mudpuppie at 5:58 PM on September 7, 2011