Are my pickles safe?

over the past few months, i've saved up a few jars of leftover pickle juice when the pickles were finished. we are pickle fanatics in my house, so it wasn't tough to do.

this past week, i had an abundance of english cucumbers from my garden that would have gone bad if not used up, so i sliced them into 5" spears and put them into 2 of the jars of leftover pickle juice and spices.

i tasted a spear today, and it was pretty good. it had a fresh pickle kinda flavour that wasn't terribly strong but it was tasty; equally tasting of the pickle brine and the fresh cuke.

but my thought was is this a safe practice so long as they're kept refrigerated? how long can they last that way?
should i add anything like more vinegar or more salt and spices to make it safe?

tia for your help.

All I can tell you Tom is that my Grandmother used to do this with the big jars of juice leftovers from pickles eaten.

She'd slice or spear the cukes from Gramp's garden along with some onions too. She purposely saved that jarred brine in the back of the fridge and none of us died or got sick from eating those pickles.

I honestly cannot answer this question. There's usually enough vinegar and salt to cure the cucumbers. What should concern you is the reintroduction of bacteria or other pathogens into the original jar of pickles. Every time you took a pickle from the jar you had the propensity to contaminate the field (either with a fork or your fingers). I'm sure you washed the new cucumbers, but even the best wash can miss things.

My suggestion would be this: Dump the existing, leftover brine into a pot and heat it to boiling. Let it simmer a couple of minutes after it boils. Clean your new pickles thoroughly. Sanitize the existing jars or get new ones. Make sure there is no rust on the cap. If so, discard it. You could ditch the jars entirely and use tupperware. Add the cucumbers to the hot brine. Let it cool enough to handle and then rejar into clean sterile jars.

Sure, it's more work than you bargained for, and it might not be necessary. What I do know is that professionally, we would never be permitted to add new product to old for health safety reasons. What you lose is the ability to track providence. You lose just how old your product is. There is no way to determine if that little thing floating in the jar is a pickling spice or a piece of tuna that was stuck on the fork when you fished out the pickle the day you made yourself a tuna sandwich.

Hope that helped.

sounds like a shortcut to "refrigerator pickles" - which keep a month or so without issue _but_ as pointed out, cleanliness is important. all the refrigerator pickle methods I've seen start out with 'boil the . . .'

Can you reuse the brine from a pickle jar for things like chiles? Just boil first?

In my opinion, if you boil the brine again, it should be safe.

thanks sass, vb, and chowder.

i'll try the boiling thing from now on. i doubt i'll go as far as sterilizing the jars, but i will wash them out well before refilling.

buckytom said:

thanks sass, vb, and chowder.

i'll try the boiling thing from now on. i doubt i'll go as far as sterilizing the jars, but i will wash them out well before refilling.

Click to expand...

Oops Tom, I guess I was assuming that you did heat the brine before adding the cukes.

buckytom said:

thanks sass, vb, and chowder.

i'll try the boiling thing from now on. i doubt i'll go as far as sterilizing the jars, but i will wash them out well before refilling.

Click to expand...

Most residential dishwashers are suitable for sterilization.

ok...say I empty out a pickle jar, put the brine in a sauce pan and BTB. Take the empty jar and set it in a pot of boiling water, put the brine back in the jar, then add my chiles... to the jar hot? or do I wait for the brine to cool before I put them back in the fridge?

If you are not going to 'seal' the jar of chiles, it will have to be refrigerated. If you are going to refrigerate it, put the hot jar into the fridge, just don't put the lid on till the contents cool enough to not make condensation on the top of the cap.