Did I ruin the pickles?

10 years ago

I've been canning for years, so I can't believe I did this: I processed nearly 30 jars of dill pickles today, and I did not sterilize the jars. I used Mrs. Wage's Dill Pickle mix ( http://store.mrswagesstore.com/mrswagdilpic.html ) and followed their directions - except for the sterilization, which I forgot. I raw packed the quartered cucumbers and put hot liquid over them and processed for 10 minutes at a rolling boil, then cooled in the canner for 5 minutes.

I woke up at 1 AM, realizing my mistake.

BUT I see that the National Center for Home Food Preservation says jars processed UNDER 10 minutes have to be sterile: http://nchfp.uga.edu/how/can_01/sterile_jars.html

And the Ball Complete Book of Home Preservation says nothing on the topic, as far as I can tell. In fact, their 10 minute processing recipes specifically say to heat the jars but not boil them.

Are my pickles safe? Or do I need to reprocess them??

Thank you for helping me figure this out.

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Comments (3)

2ajsmama
10 years ago
Your jars are fine if processed 10 minutes. You should heat the jars before packing so that they don't break when you pour the boiling vinegar in, or when you put them in the canner, and obviously that didn't happen ;-)
kriswrite
Original Author
10 years ago
Actually, I did heat the jars, I just didn't boil them for 10 minutes to sterilize them.

The Mrs. Wages instructions are for both quart jars (which I used) and pint jars, which are processed only 5 minutes. I suspect they just simplified the instructions by saying both pint and quart jars should be sterile.
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digdirt2
10 years ago
The guideline reads that anything processed for 10 mins. or longer does not require pre-sterilized jars. The sterilization is done during the processing.

Anything that calls for LESS than 10 min of processing does require the use of pre-sterilized jars (10 min in boiling water prior to filling).

Heating the jars and sterilizing the jars are two separate issues. Sterilized jars are automatically heated but heated jars are not necessarily sterilized.

Dave

PS: your pickles are fine