Mrs. Wages® Pickling & Canning Salt

What Is Pickling Salt?

Pickling salt is fine-ground 100% pure sodium chloride. That’s it! It really is just pure salt for canning and pickling at home.

Pickling salt is its most common name, but it can also be called canning salt or preserving salt. It is an important ingredient, and there are a few reasons that it’s important to use pickling salt instead of ordinary table salt.

What Makes Pickling Salt Different from Table Salt?

The biggest differences between pickling salt and table salt are the texture and the added ingredients in table salt.

Pickling salt is much more finely ground than typical table salt, and much finer than larger salt varieties like Himalayan pink salt or chef’s flake salt.

Why does the texture of the salt matter? Finely ground salt has more surface area relative to the volume, which makes it easier to fully dissolve the salt into your brine.

But there is another problem with using other salts instead of pickling salt.

That is, there are other ingredients in common table salt, and impurities in varieties like pink Himalayan salt that aren’t present in pickling salt.

Those impurities can change the composition of your pickle, changing your results. In addition, additives designed to keep the salt from clumping, and additives like iodine can also change how well a pickling recipe does when you use them.

What Happens When You Use a Different Salt in Pickling?

One of the core benefits of pickling salt is that the salt is highly consistent and provides consistent results when you use it. When you use a different salt, you lose that.

The most common reaction to using a different salt in pickling is that it can give you a cloudy brine. For the most part that’s not a bad problem to have, but it can make it harder to monitor the pickle and make sure you aren’t getting any accidental fermentation or bacterial contamination.

Another problem is that using a different salt may introduce off-flavors, especially for recipes that call for a higher concentration of salt, or that are likely to sit and be preserved for a long time.

Can You Substitute Pickling Salt?

Yes, but we don’t recommend it. Pickling salt is always going to be the best option when you’re making a pickle, and often it’s also the best option for other canning recipes as well.

That said, there’s nothing unsafe about using table salt. It just might change the way the pickle recipe works.

Even if it doesn’t make a significant difference in the beginning, the longer your pickle stays in the brine, or the longer your canned goods stay sealed before you use them, the more those differences are likely to show up.

The other challenge is getting the right amount of salt into your pickle. Pickling salts are typically measured by weight rather than volume, which can help make sure the right amount of salt makes it into the recipe.

However, other salts might not have the same weight per volume, so you may have to adjust the amount you add to make sure you’re getting enough sodium chloride into the brine, along with the other additives in the salt.

Getting the right proportion of salt into your brine is particularly important if you are making a fermented pickle.

Is Pickling Salt Only Good for Pickling?

No, but we don’t necessarily recommend using it for regular cooking.

There are a couple of reasons why pickling salt is mostly only used for pickling.

The first is that most table salt is iodized salt. Iodine is an important nutrient for thyroid health, and it’s easy not to get enough in your diet.1 So, while you can use pickling salt in a pinch, you don’t want to completely replace table salt with pickling salt in your diet because you’d risk iodine deficiency.

Taste is another big reason you might not want to switch. One reason so many chefs use larger flaked salt is because those larger flakes, especially added so that they don’t dissolve completely into your food, taste better.

Switching to pickling salt will let the salt dissolve more easily into your food, but it can also make it harder to taste how much salt is there and make you want to add more than you really need.

Looking for More Canning Tips and Recipes?

If you’re looking for more tips and tricks about canning and pickling, visit Mrs. Wages! Or go directly to our blog to see our latest advice!

KOSHER DILL PICKLES
Makes 8 Quarts

YOU WILL NEED

• 9 lbs of pickling cucumbers (about 50- 3 to 4-inches)
• 8 cups of water
• 4 cups Mrs. Wages® White Distilled Vinegar (5% acidity)
• 1 cup Mrs. Wages® Pickling & Canning Salt
• 8 heads fresh dill
• 16-24 garlic cloves
• 8 small red or green chile peppers (optional)

DIRECTIONS

PREPARE and PROCESS home canning jars and lids according to manufacturer’s instructions for sterilized jars. Keep jars hot.

WASH cucumbers and drain. Cut 1/16-inch slice off blossom end and discard. Leave cucumbers whole or cut into spears.

COMBINE water, Mrs. Wages® White Distilled Vinegar,and Mrs. Wages® Pickling & Canning Salt in a large non-reactive saucepan. Do not use aluminum. Bring to boil. Remove syrup from heat.

PACK cucumbers tightly into hot jars, leaving 1/2-inch headspace. In each jar add 1 head fresh dill, 2-3 garlic cloves, and 1 small chile pepper. Evenly divide hot pickling syrup among the packed jars, leaving 1/2-inch headspace. Unused brine may be stored in a non-reactive container up to 1 week in refrigerator. Remove air bubbles, wipe rim and cap each jar as it is filled.

PROCESS pints 10 minutes*, quarts 15 minutes*, in a boiling water bath canner. Remove canner from heat, remove lid and let jars stand for 5 minutes in canner. Remove jars. Let jars sit undisturbed to cool at room temperature for 12 to 24 hours. Test jars for airtight seals according to manufacturer’s directions. If jars do not completely seal, refrigerate and consume within 1 week.

Product is ready to eat after 24 hours. Before serving, chill to enhance flavor and crispness. Store properly processed shelf-stable product in a cool place, and use within 1 year. For plain dills, leave out the garlic.

*Processing time listed is for altitudes less than 1000 feet. At Altitudes of 1000 feet or more, increase processing time 1 minute for each 1000 feet of altitude.