Reviving this because I found that the only even close to kosher deli within 45 minutes of me stocks Batampte sour tomatoes in jars. I used to be able to buy them in supermarkets but they disappeared (along with natural casing beef hot dogs). Still making my own pickles but occasionally some of them turn out disappointingly soft. Otherwise theyâre better than The Pickle Guysâ.
I think thatâs because theyâre a little long in the tooth. It happens to me as well.
The cucumbers? Theyâre all from the same batches at our nearby Persian grocery and are brined for the same amount of time. The soft ones arenât the last ones eaten. They DO seem to be the ones with the most seeds and center mass.
Not the last ones eaten. The ones that were harvested too late. Thatâs also why they have the most seeds.
Do they carry Bubbieâs pickles where you live? To me they taste closest to the ones my fatherâs family made. They even have the same cloudy brine.
I donât see Bubbies often but buy them when I do. Actually, when mine stay crisp, we like them better.
Ah! Thanks. I buy the smaller, firmest Persian cukes at a market that has a bin of maybe 500+ at any given time. Is there another way to select the youngest ones?
I squeeze them to see if thereâs too much âgive.â Discreetly, and not too hard. Because I donât want to be one of those people, the ones husking the corn and poking the peaches.
Yeah. These all feel firm when I wash them before beginning the ferment so Iâm thinking it has something to do with the process, although I donât know why only some of them get soft. The seed thing must be related though because the soft ones get hollow inside.
We thought that the process decision is the brineâs salt concentration as the controllable variable that determines full sour or half sour. (Batampte full sour is a go to around here.) All that said, our food chemistry in pickle department is mostly lacking.
It isnât the salt concentration of the brine that determines half vs full sour. Itâs the length of time the cukes are left in the brine. The salt to water ratio is a constant.
Do you throw a couple of bay leaves in? The tannins do a lot to firm up the pickles.
We now wonder: if concentration is same, and time is controlled variable, how does it seem that the appearance of the brine in the bottle from the store isnât the same between the two. Maybe itâs our old eyes. Or, to paraphrase Credence Clearwater, what stops the fermenting? Thanks.
I donât notice any difference in the appearance of the brine. I live near The Pickle Guys, so Iâll ask them next time I pass by.
Heating the brine to kill the bacteria that enable it.
Yes I use bay leaves but , come to think of it, I may not have last time. 
I thought so too, and thatâs certainly the case. But I once bought a 25lb bucket from a wholesale pickle supplier to delis and their promise that the half-sours (all they had that day) would become full-sour in a few days didnât come true. In my own experience the difference can be only a couple of days, so I think they likely used something to stop fermentation or changed the salinity of the brine in the bucket. They just didnât tell me the truth. They were good but not my favorite. 25lbs in a lot of pickles, bun the the way.
Yeah, thatâs not going to happen. In my experience, full sours need to be left unrefrigerated for at least a week (depends on how warm the air is), or refrigerated for at least two weeks. But I very much doubt your supplier did anything to the brine.
Iâve never heard of doing this. Is this a common addition?
