Pickling

[sg]

I have four jars of onions happily pickling away and one that has onions in and a few cloves of garlic. The garlic seems to be turning the onions a blueish green colour. Should I worry?

thanks

[WendyS]

Have pickled plenty of onions in my time but never with garlicso have never heard of this. Did you use brown malt vinegar or the clear vinegar. All the ingredients, including the vinegar are are natural products so I wouldn't imagine there was anything healthwise to worry about but if you're concerned, it might be a good idea to wait until they're ready to eat and then have a small nibble of one, splitting it out afterwards, to see if there's anything strange of chemically about the taste. Please report back to us in due course - all we picklers and preservers might learn something new.

[coyn]

Just out of curiosity sg, why did you put garlic in?

[kempie]

Just to pick up on a point above

"All the ingredients... are natural products so I wouldn't imagine there was anything healthwise to worry about..."

Natural does not equate to healthy (cf. digitalis, cyanide etc.)

This by no means implies that I believe there is a health issue in mixing garlic and onion with vinegar, only that it cannot be ruled out by using that argument.

[sg]

thanks Wendy and others, I will taste them in mid-december, and see then. The vinegar I used was Sarsons pickling vinegar, and I put garlic cloves in just to be experimental. I have put a couple of home-grown chillis in another jar, and slices of lemon in another.

[deemartin]

This often used to happen to my dads ordinary ones (ie just onions and vinegar) usually though when they were at least a year old and starting to go soft. Some in the family prefered these.