Episode 46 Canning Salt

Hello and welcome back to Preserving the Pantry. I'm glad you're here with me again today, and if this is your first time, welcome. I'm so glad you're here, and make certain that you listen to the other episodes, and catch up on all the canning, and preserving conversations that we've had so far.

Today we're going to be talking about canning salt. Or pickling salt. Did you know that those two are actually interchangeable? You can use one or the other, just the same. It's essentially the same thing.

We're going to be talking about that today and other salts in the use of canning. But before we get into that, I want to know, how's your garden? Is it planted? Is it growing? Are you harvesting yet? Oh, I can only dream of harvesting yet.

We haven't even put our garden in. We are a little bit behind schedule, but we live in an area where we still have a danger of frost, so we often get our garden in and then cover it with plastic to really keep it safe. But we're just a little behind.

We have our tomato plants and our pepper plants, and those will be going in, but for this next month, we'll still have to keep an eye on those temperatures. Sometimes we have no risk at all, and it's just fine. But the last thing I want to do is lose any of my crops. We don't actually start harvesting any of those items, tomatoes or peppers, until usually mid to late August.

Some years it's even been the beginning of September. So we don't start canning most of that harvest until then. But I know across the country, wherever you are, that varies. So we continue the conversations about canning.

Let's talk about salt. Most canning recipes have salt listed as an ingredient, but except for the exception of two types of recipes, salt is always optional.

So you have the choice of adding that salt or not. The two places where it's not optional are when you are fermenting sauerkraut or fermenting pickles. The salt is required because that salt is needed for a part of that fermentation. Otherwise, the salt is really optional. I do not typically add salt when I am making my tomatoes or really almost anything.

I don't like to add it. I prefer to add it when I'm actually using that as an ingredient. I do add salt when I am doing my dill pickles. I like that salty flavor right out of the jar. Now I make a dill pickle, not a fermented pickle. Those are a little bit different, something I want to play with one of these years, but I have not attempted that quite yet.

So canning salt is a fine-grained salt that does not have any additives to it. It's just the salt, nothing else. And it doesn't have any anti-caking agents or any iodine added to it. Those items it that you will typically find in table salt. They add the anticaking agent so that it doesn't clog up your salt shaker.

And oftentimes iodine is added to that salt. You can still use regular table salt, but it can affect the taste just a bit. And if you have any sort of broth in there or like a liquid, it can make it slightly cloudy. It's just not the best appearance looking, so it's not going to ruin your product, but it's not gonna make the best quality product.

So I would purchase canning salt or pickling salt if you're going to be canning and adding it in there. You could also use a kosher salt, a coarse kosher salt. They don't have anything added to it either. The only thing to pay attention to is that it is a coarser salt compared to the canning salt, which is very fine.

When you're measuring the amount you'll need just a little bit more. If a recipe calls for a tablespoon of canning salt, you'll need a tablespoon plus about three-quarters of a teaspoon of quartz kosher salt.

You can just play with that a little bit. You just don't wanna make things too salty. But because the course grains take up more space, you're getting actually a little bit less salt, which is why you need to add more. The same thing would happen with the flaked sea salt. Just the amount that you're going to need is going to be a little bit more if you really want to add that salt flavor. A flaked sea salt is not recommended at all to use fermented pickles or in sauerkraut.

They recommend you don't use them, and part of it is because it's very hard to get a consistent measurement on that. So that's it for this episode. Canning salt is just a short episode, but we've got all the basics covered and now you know all about canning and pickling salt. I'll see you again next week in the pantry.

Bye.

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