05 Podcast Episode Transcript

Living Homegrown Podcast Episode #05 Q&A Episode - Canning Salt

Show Notes: www.LivingHomegrown.com/05

You’re listening to the Living Homegrown Podcast, episode #05

Announcer: Welcome to the Living Homegrown Podcast, where it’s all about how to live farm fresh, without the farm. To help guide the way to a more ﬂavourful and sustainable lifestyle is your host, national PBS TV producer and canning expert Theresa Loe.

Theresa: Hi everyone, this is Theresa Loe. And welcome to another episode of the Living Homegrown podcast. Now this podcast is about living farm fresh without the farm. And that’s through canning, preserving, fermenting and a whole slew of other artisan food crafts. It’s also about homesteading in a small space. And I homestead on just 1/10th of an acre here in Los Angeles. And I’m also the canning expert and the co-producer on the gardening series Growing a Greener World on PBS.

Now if you want to learn more about this podcast or my background, you can check out episode 00 of the podcast which is kind of like an audio version of an about me page that you might ﬁnd on a blog.

So today’s episode is a Q&A episode from a listener. And the listener’s name is Colleen. She actually left an audio question on canning salt on my website. And I’ll play that in just a second. But I wanted to make sure that you knew that if you have a question you can leave me either a recording or a written version on my website by going to LivingHomegrown.com/ ASK. That’s A-S-K. And you can leave your question right there.

I have this app on my website called SpeakPipe. And you can actually press a button and record talking into the microphone on your computer or

1 on your phone, whatever you’re using to search my website. And that recording will automatically be sent to me and I can use it in the podcast. But if you don’t want to leave a recording you can do it the old fashioned way and just send me a comment on the page and it sends it automatically to me as well. So if you have a question, head on over.

Okay so let me just play Colleen’s question and then I will answer it.

Colleen: “Hi Theresa. My name is Colleen. I am a huge fan of your website so thank you so much for this opportunity to ask a question. I am really new to canning and I notice some recipes ask for pickling salt. And I’m wondering if I can use regular salt instead or if it has to be that because I’m not really sure what pickling salt is or where I would get it. Thank you so much!”

Theresa: Okay Colleen, this is a great question and I actually get asked this question almost on a weekly basis. Especially in the summer time when we’re really in the peak of pickling season.

Now ﬁrst let me start off by answering your question as to what is pickling salt. So pickling salt, it’s also called canning salt. It’s a salt that has no additives. So it doesn’t have any anti caking agents or any iodine. It is just pure sodium chloride. And if you go and pull a regular your standard household salt off the shelf and you look at the label, you’ll see that it has other ingredients besides sodium chloride. And one of those is usually the anti caking agent.

Now an anti caking agent doesn’t hurt us in any way. The reason it’s in the salt is that it’s there to make it more pourable because normally salt will pull moisture out of the air and it will get clumped up and then you can’t pour it out of your salt shaker. So the anti caking agents are there to keep it pourable. But when you use it in pickling, what it does is make the brine or the clear liquid that you have with your pickle, it makes it very very cloudy. And there’s nothing harmful about that but it doesn’t look too appetizing. So you deﬁnitely wouldn’t win any awards at the state fair if you have used regular salt.

2 Now the other ingredient that is usually in your household salt is iodine. And now again this doesn’t hurt you in any way and doesn’t make your pickles unsafe, but it does make usually the food that you are pickling it can darken it quite a bit. And the problem again is just the appearance.

So you want to use a salt that is pure and doesn’t have any other ingredients so that your pickles will look appetizing. That is really the point of using a canning or pickling salt.

Now the other characteristic of a canning salt is that it’s cut as a really ﬁne grain. And that’s so that it will dissolve very quickly when it’s put into liquid. So that makes it nice when you’re canning so as soon as you put it into the liquid it’s already dissolving because it’s got very, very tiny grains.

And the other thing is that it doesn’t matter if you are using a canning salt for a fermented pickle or a quick pickle, both instances you will get a nice, clear, crystal clear liquid or brine if you use a canning salt. So it’s more for an appearance standard.

Now the other part of your question was can you substitute regular salt for canning salt. And the answer is sometimes. Because it doesn’t affect the safety as far as you know the cloudiness of the brine or the fact that it might darken the pickles, but when you go to substitute a different salt for a recipe that is speciﬁcally calling out canning salt, you could unintentionally be using a different amount because of the grain size.

So let me explain. With canning salt you have very, very ﬁne grains. And you’re getting a certain amount in let’s say a cup of salt. When you switch it to something else like a different salt that maybe has a larger grain, a more rocky, larger grain, you are actually getting a lot more air pockets in that cup of salt and you may actually be measuring a lesser amount of salt. And that can deﬁnitely affect the ratio of the salt in the recipe. And this is very important in a fermented recipe because that salt recipe is what is keeping your pickles safe. So if you want to substitute one salt for another, it’s highly recommended that you weigh the salt rather than measure it you know in volume like using a spoon, a teaspoon or a tablespoon or a cup.

3 Instead what you want to do instead is use weight measurements when you’re substituting.

But as a general rule if you can’t ﬁnd canning salt in your neighbourhood or you don’t have any canning salt, there is one salt that can usually be substituted and that is kosher salt. Now kosher salt usually is pure. But ﬁrst, you have to check the label because not all kosher salts are just pure sodium chloride. some of them do have other ingredients which can affect your brine.

Also, kosher salt tends to be a little bit larger grain. But for the most part, it’s not huge grain size and you can usually substitute. When you take a cup of kosher salt and a cup of canning salt, they are very close to the same measurement. They are not exact. You are actually getting a little bit kosher salt than you are for a volume measure of canning salt. So I will have on the show notes for this episode some charts and information on substituting one salt for another. But as a general rule if you’re using small amounts of canning salt like a few tablespoons you can substitute a few tablespoons of kosher salt. But again, you always want to check that label because you could end up with kosher salt with other additives and wind up with a not so clear brine or a not so appetizing pickle.

Now what about other salts. Like sea salt or a flake salt. Well those are considered safe but they’re not recommend to substitute in a standard pickle recipe and here’s why. They are perfectly safe from a sodium standpoint because they are usually pure and have no other additives. But the reason that they can’t be used interchangeably with canning salt is because they measure out completely differently by volume. Their grains are shaped really differently. Sea salt has really large, irregular grains. And flake salt is really flat, and stacks in a really compact way. So when you measure by volume they are really too far out of sync with what canning salt would be.

So I usually use canning salt in all of my recipes even if it’s not a pickle recipe because I want to make sure that I have a clear brine if I’m adding salt as a ﬂavouring in any kind of a recipe. But if I don’t have canning salt I

4 do substitute kosher salt, pure kosher salt. The bottom line is if you can get pickling or canning salt, it’s available all over the place, I would deﬁnitely buy it. It’s not any more expensive than regular table salt and if you have it on hand it just makes everything a whole lot easier.

So you wanted to know where to get this salt. You can actually buy it online. I’ve seen it on amazon of all places! But I will have a list in the show notes of sources of where you can buy it online. A lot of times they also have it at a really well stocked grocery store or hardware store that sells other canning equipment. I don’t have too many places near me that carry it you know on the shelf. So sometimes I do have to order it online. But as a general rule, wherever you can buy canning supplies, they usually also buy canning or pickling salt.

And one last thing Colleen, since you’re a newbie and we’re talking about pickles and salt, I just want to make sure that you know that it’s never okay to adjust the salt in a fermented pickle recipe. In fact, unless you know exactly what you’re doing it’s never okay to adjust the salt in any canning recipe.

And the reason is because in many canning recipes, but especially in fermented recipes, that salt is there for a reason. It’s there for your safety and it is suppressing the bad bacteria and it is helping everything to create an environment where that bad bacteria, especially botulism, cannot grow or reproduce. So you never, ever mess with the salt on a recipe. You can’t like think “Hmmm like this seems really salty I think I’ll reduce it.” You just can’t do that. If you do you can get very quickly into a dangerous situation. So I just want to make sure you know that. If you don’t like a recipe because it just seems too salty, then there are other things you can do to bump up the sweetness, but the best choice is to ﬁnd another recipe that you do like that is still using a safe ratio. And the best way to do that is to ﬁnd a USDA approved recipe or a recipe from a reputable source that you know is using safe practices.

So I hope that helps and I hope that you’re able to make some fantastic pickle recipes this summer. We’re getting close, we’re just a few months away from pickle season and I think you’ll be ready to hit the ground running. So I have a lot more information on pickles and salt and substitutions and all that good stuff over on my website in the show notes.

5 So head on over to LivingHomegrown.com/05 and I’ll have all that information right there for you.

Thank you so much for joining me today! I know how busy you are and I really appreciate that you took time out of your busy day to spend it with me. So until next time, keep working towards working a little bit more local and living homegrown. Take care!

Announcer: That’s all for this episode of the Living Homegrown podcast. Visit LivingHomegrown.com to download Theresa’s free canning resource guide and ﬁnd more tips on how to live farm fresh, without the farm. Be sure to join Theresa Loe next time on the Living Homegrown podcast.