Cooking For Engineers

[melva02]

Someone posted on the harvest forum at gardenweb.com about some pickles she canned that were too salty. (In case anyone's unfamiliar, canning recipes are tested for safety, so you don't change them on the fly like most cooking.) I suggested that each jar she opened could be drained of its brine and filled with water to allow some salt to leach out of the pickles. Does anyone have a suggestion as to how long this would take or how often to change the water? She said just replacing the brine with fresh water didn't make much difference right away. Who's a chemist on here? :-)

[LAN3]

I don't know about pickles, but whenever I've ever heard of food being preserved in salt, it general takes several changes of water to get the salt out. I'm thinking specifically of bacalao (salt cod) and things like corned beef and probably salt pork. Of course, this sort of soaking is always a prelude to cooking, while aren't meant for cooking, generally speaking. *shrug*. Change the water several times-- or at least taste the water to see if it's taking salt, because if it isn't, then she might have to stick with her salt-pickles.

[Gail Miner]

Re: desalting pickles. I just made green tomato chow and judging frm the couple of tastes I taken, it's too salty for me. Smokers will love it.
I added some extra water but don't think it helped much.
So after checking the web sites, I have decided to use an old remedy for removing salt and that is to use a potato. So when I open a bottle, I am going to put it in a pot, add a small raw, let it cook a bit and see if the taste of the pickles improves. It's worth a try....

submitted by Gail Miner, Lower Sackville, Nova Scotia, Canada. Sept 16,2016

[Dilbert]

the potato trick is widely rumored to work, but people / labs that try it generally say it doesn't.

I've not yet seen a method to remove excess salt (from food liquids/etc) except by reverse osmosis - which is may not be real practical in home use....