In Which I Panic a Bit about Pickling Beets
So, I pickled half of the beets I got at the pick your own last night. I used the Ball Blue Book
So, I did all of this. I packed my jars, gave them a gentle whack on the counter a few times to settle them, packed them some more, whacked them again and adjusted so that I had the appropriate headspace. Then I poured my brine in and gave it a paddle through with a spatula for air bubbles. This is always a huge pain when not using wide mouth jars. I prefer the narrower mouth jars for pickles because there’s less chance of floating. Anyway, when I did this, I noticed immediately that my 1/4″ headspace beets suddenly went well above the headspace. I attempted to jam everything back in place and when that didn’t work, removed a few beets and tapped the jars on the counter again. More brine had to be added to bring back to the 1/4″ headspace, but, of course, now the beets were floating, so I couldn’t even tell if I’d stuffed everything properly or not.
So, I ask all of you canners… is this common? Did I hot pack my jars too much? Too little? It’s entirely possible I overpacked as the recipe makes 4 pints and I had 3 and a half pints and a jar full of brine leftover, but then I always have a lot of brine leftover and I didn’t measure out 4 pounds of beets, so it’s possible I underestimated. This is the second set of beets I’ve had float out of the three I’ve pickled and I’m not entirely sure why. (Though the brine on my first set was so dark, they could have floated and I wouldn’t have noticed) I’ve refrigerator pickled a fair amount of beets and don’t remember it then either. Should I not have given the jars a gentle rap on the counter to get things to settle more evenly? I should have removed the air bubbles even if it did set everything all assunder.
And, perhaps most importantly, if little bits of beets are floating out of the vinegar, are we all gonna die of botulism?
July 30th, 2010 at 4:51 pm
Oh, honey. Please don’t worry. It’s notoriously difficult to gauge the get the right fit between food and jars, and 3/12 pints instead of 4 is pretty darn close. I’m assuming you processed them correctly, right, giving them a full 30 minutes in a hot water bath? Assuming you did this, you’ll be fine. Floating foods are normal. It won’t win you any prizes at the county fair, but you’ll be OK. But be sure to remove those band so that if for some awful reason it’s not OK, the seals will pop if you develop and active bacterial population.
July 30th, 2010 at 5:09 pm
Yep, I did 30 minutes in a hot water bath and stopped leaving rings on because of someone’s FAQ. Yours? Food in Jars? Someone awesome, anyway. Thanks for the reassurance. I’ve been canning for a year but I still sometimes feel like I’m brand new at this.