Pickled Eggs THREAD

1L wide mouth mason’s sterilizing nicely.
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5 dozen eggs just starting to boil using the Gatehouse/Julia Child Perfect Egg Method™.
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Two pans of ice water to chill the eggs.
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Chilling the eggs.
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The secret pickling solutions. I could tell you but I'd have to...well, ok, just tell you.
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The finished product!
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I re-confirmed that:
1. Older eggs (buying a week in advance) peel way easier than fresh eggs.
2. The chilling step, and keeping the ice in the pans replenished, makes life easier peeling too, especially if fresh eggs. Reduces the number of eggs that gets pulled apart if you are a bit overzealous with the ripping the shells off.
3. There is no wonder that pioneers had little spare time. It took me start to finish just over three hours, and I had fresh running hot water, an electric stove and a Sobeys I could pick all the stuff up from.
4. Wally is evil. He started this thread, IIRC. ;)

Seriously, it was a pleasurable thing to do on a long weekend. Now, just have to wait the two weeks to see how they turned out.

Recipes:
Ruprick's Boat House Pickled Egg Recipe (Modified)
- a modified internet recipe, originally by some guy named Richard C. Passavant (you can google the original under 'Ruprick's Boat House Pickled Egg Recipe' to see what changes were made).

Ingredients:
3 Dozen Hard Boiled Eggs
4 cups White Pickling Vinegar
2 x 250ml Sliced Jalapeno's and Juice
2 x 354 ml French’s Hot Sauce
Directions:
Boil the vinegar and jalepeno's for about 20min and then add the French’s sauce to it. Layer the eggs and the peppers in the jar and then pour the liquid over the top.

Salt & Malt Picked Eggs - my recipe, just playing around.
Ingredients:
2 dozen hard boiled eggs
4 cups of white pickling vinegar
2 cups of malt vinegar
3 tbsp of red bell pepper spice (a fine montreal-style steak spice w/ dehy red bell peppers I made up)
Directions:
Boil the vinegar, malt vinegar and steak spice for about 20 min. Add the eggs in the jar and then pour the liquid over the top.

I would have thrown a CGN sticker in a pic for s&g's but wasn't sure if Greentips would approve...or likes pickled eggs. :)
 
8 days in the jar...must resist.

I bought a canning kit today and am gonna chug ceasers and make spicy pickled beans all aftergoon.
 
Guinness goes great with pickled eggs, but I stink so bad it means a night on the couch. I've just dumped them in pickled onion juice but now I have to try it Wally style.
 
:D I love it when my threads do well.... it's like a tribute to my awesomeness :D:p

K, I'm wondering what it would be like if you added some maple syrup to the brine...?? You could make a sort of sweet maple pickled egg..... works well for Gouda Cheese...

Bullwhip, I'm gonna have to try both of your recipes..... We're into Hunting season now so I'll have to have a good supply of eggs for our weekend hunts :D

Should this thread be Stickied?
 
Wally said:
:D I love it when my threads do well.... it's like a tribute to my awesomeness :D:p

K, I'm wondering what it would be like if you added some maple syrup to the brine...?? You could make a sort of sweet maple pickled egg..... works well for Gouda Cheese...

Bullwhip, I'm gonna have to try both of your recipes..... We're into Hunting season now so I'll have to have a good supply of eggs for our weekend hunts :D

Should this thread be Stickied?
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Easy enough to do a quick and dirty test for the flavour: take a 1/8 cup of vinegar, add a teaspoon of maple syrup to it, stir it, and taste; adjust proportion as necessary. My guess is it would taste a bit sweet and sour-like, heavy on the sour.

The only caveat being I really wouldn't recommend too high a level of maple syrup. The acetic acid level of the vinegar acts as a preservative lowering the pH while in the maple syrup it is sugar level lowering the water activity.

If you are talking 99 parts vinegar and 1 part syrup, as you get closer to 50-50, you are diluting the vinegar more and weakening the syrup at the same time.

Long story short, if you aren't careful food bugs could have a hayday in your eggs. At the very least, I'd be refrigerating the mix, or maybe doing a full canning process with a pressure cooker just to be safe.

CDC has one case listed of a guy pickling eggs, poking them with a toothpick to better marinate them, and he gave himself botulism as the toothpick dragged C.bot along into the egg, but the vinegar solution didn't fully penetrate to the yolks, so the bug grew nice and happy. Didn't help matters that he left the open jar on the counter and didn't refrigerate it - probably would have been okay if he had just put it in the fridge. http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm4934a2.htm

Not trying to be a nancyboy or a chicken-little of the kitchen, just since its the day job I tend to overkill on any food safety stuff.

As for the recipes, I'll have to get back to you next week when they're done stewing to see if they are any good as I did them purely by guesstimate using what I liked from a bunch of everyone's recipes. I'm sort of worried about the malt vinegar one, not so much about the hot one.

I'd vote for a sticky but would the success and fame be too much for you, sir. ;)
 
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Cracked a jar....needs more time to damn vinegary too.

I did up a ton of spicy pickled beans and beets last night too.

stunk the house up real good. the GF is still pissed off. That might have something to do with the 1/2 dozen martinis I had too.

I used the water process on the beans and beets so I can shelf store them. I think I am going to get a pressure cooker and can me some salmon when the time comes.
 
This thread isn't going to bump itself :)

Put up a batch today using Wally's recipe with extra cayenne pepper and then amused myself for a while reading about botulism :runaway: Seems the safest practices are

1. use pickling vinegar rather than regular for the low pH
2. make sure everything is cooked (not sure what the internal temp for eggs is using the Julia Child method but probably adequate. Boil brine 10 minutes)
3. make sure everything is sterilized (10 minutes in boiling water for jars & lid)
4. don't prick the egg
5. refrigerate ASAP and keep refrigerated

That said, the only actual documented case I could find was this one:

http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/284/17/2181

Foodborne Botulism From Eating Home-Pickled Eggs—Illinois, 1997

JAMA. 2000;284:2181-2182.

MMWR. 2000;49:778-780

During November 1997, the Illinois Department of Public Health was notified by a local physician about a possible case of foodborne botulism. This report summarizes the case investigation, which implicated home-pickled eggs as the cause.

On November 23, 1997, a previously healthy 68-year-old man became nauseated, vomited, and complained of abdominal pain. During the next 2 days, he developed diplopia, dysarthria, and respiratory impairment, necessitating hospitalization and mechanical ventilation. Physical examination confirmed multiple cranial nerve abnormalities, including extraocular motor palsy and diffuse flaccid paralysis. Possible botulism was diagnosed, and a one-vial dose of trivalent (types A, B, and E) antibotulinum toxin was administered. A sample of the patient's serum collected before antitoxin administration demonstrated the presence of type B botulinum toxin. A food history revealed no exposures to home-canned products; however, the patient had eaten pickled eggs that he had prepared 7 days before onset of illness; gastrointestinal symptoms began 12 hours after ingestion. The patient recovered after prolonged supportive care.

The pickled eggs were prepared using a recipe that consisted of hard-boiled eggs, commercially prepared beets and hot peppers, and vinegar. The intact hard-boiled eggs were peeled and punctured with toothpicks then combined with the other ingredients in a glass jar that closed with a metal screw-on lid. The mixture was stored at room temperature and occasionally was exposed to sunlight.

Cultures revealed Clostridium botulinum type B, and type B toxin was detected in samples of the pickled egg mixture at CDC's National Botulism Surveillance and Reference Laboratory. C. botulinum was cultured from the pickling liquid, beets, and egg yolk. The concentration of preformed type B toxin was 1000 times greater in the egg yolks than in the pickling liquid and was undetected in the beets. Peppers from the original commercial container contained no detectable toxin, and bacterial cultures of the peppers did not yield C. botulinum. Beets from the original commercial containers were not available. The pH of the pickling liquid was 3.5 (i.e., adequate to prevent C. botulinum germination and toxin formation. However, the pH of the egg yolk was not determined [normal egg yolk pH: 6.8]).


Reported by:

G Rifkin, MD, Rockford Memorial Hospital, Rockford; K Sibounheuang, L Peterson, Winnebago County Health Dept, Rockford; K Kelly, C Langkop, D Kauerauf, E Groeschel, B Adam, C Austin, DVM,'s Bornstein, MD, Illinois Dept of Public Health. National Botulism Surveillance and Reference Laboratory, Foodborne and Diarrheal Diseases Br, Div of Bacterial and Mycotic Diseases, National Center for Infectious Diseases; and an EIS Officer, CDC.


CDC Editorial Note:

Botulism is a paralytic illness caused by the neurotoxin produced by the bacterium C. botulinum. Paralysis first affects the cranial nerves, then the skeletal muscles; untreated intoxications can lead to dense flaccid paralysis, respiratory failure, and death.1,2

Although rare and sporadic, foodborne botulism is a persistent cause of morbidity and mortality in the United States. In 1997, an annual survey of state epidemiologists and directors of state public health laboratories identified 24 cases of foodborne botulism with one associated death (CDC, unpublished data, 1998). During 1989-1998, a median of 23 cases (range: 17-42 cases) of foodborne botulism was reported each year with a median of one death (range: 0-2 deaths).

C. botulinum spores are ubiquitous. Safe food preservation methods destroy spores or inhibit their germination and growth. Conditions that promote germination and growth of C. botulinum spores include absence of oxygen (anaerobic conditions), low acidity (pH greater than 4.6), temperatures greater than 39 F [4 C]), and high moisture content. Most foodborne botulism cases that occur in the United States are the result of improperly home-canned foods. This is the first reported case of botulism related to eating pickled eggs. The amount of toxin detected in the recovered egg yolk suggested that bacterial growth was concentrated in that portion of the egg. Intact eggs that have been hard-boiled should be free of bacteria or spores. Pricking cooked eggs may introduce C. botulinum spores into the yolk. Portions of the yolk that remained anaerobic and inadequately pickled (i.e., not acidified to pH less than or equal to 4.6) may have allowed C. botulinum spores to germinate, grow, and form toxin. Setting the pickling jar in sunlight provided warmth that facilitated bacterial growth and toxin production.

To reduce the risk for botulism when pickling, food items should be washed and cooked adequately, and utensils, containers, and other surfaces in contact with food, including cutting boards and hands, should be cleaned thoroughly with soap and warm water. Containers (e.g., jars and lids) in which pickling will occur should be sterilized (e.g., placed in boiling water for the prescribed period published in the container instructions).3 Adequate acidification to a pH less than or equal to 4.6 is essential. Refrigeration at 39 F (4 C) during pickling is advisable, especially in foods that may be acidified inadequately such as whole eggs. Once opened, any canned or pickled food should be refrigerated. Pricking, poking holes, or otherwise handling whole eggs in a manner that might allow spores or bacteria into the yolk should be avoided.
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I eat them like M and M's

They used sell them as well at the gas station by my house, Pickled Eggs, Hamhocks, and Pickled weiners. Old Mirtle would go right to the shoulder in the one gallon bottle to get ya the last one, god love her. They said her hands and arms are what gave the last ones in the bottle "real" flavor!
 
DARKARCHER said:
..any pickled sausage recipes?...
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Mama's Pickled Sausage

Use ring baloney, smoked sausage or any type of sausage that is already cooked. Peel off skin and slice into 1/4" slices and start a layer of sausage in the bottom of a quart jar. Add a layer of sliced onion cut into the same thickness. Continue until the jar is filled with layers of onion and sausage. Pour on the "brine" until everything is covered.

Mix 1/2 c. sugar with 3/4 c. vinegar in a 2-cup measure. Add enough water to make 2 cups. Stir thoroughly until sugar is mixed. Brine will be tart but meat and onion will absorb that. Store in refrigerator overnight, keeping covered. Keep in refrigerator.
 
fat tony said:
I have been sort of looking around for the Strubb's pickled eggs at the grocery stores; and haven't been able to find any. :confused: - has Wally bought them all up? :D
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i get mine at the safeway- right beside the lutenfisk, in the sausage section- expensive though like 5 bucks/6- so i do my own after i do theirs
 
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