I have been on a quest to recreate a Vlasic flavour of pickle using my home cucumbers.
This is the ingredient list on the jar:
Cucumbers, Water, White Vinegar, Salt, Calcium Chloride, Dehydrated Garlic, Dehydrated Red Pepper, Polysorbate 80, Natural Flavours, Spice, Tartrazine, Potassium Metabisulfite (preservative).
I’m using the Dill Pickle recipe from Healthy Canning [https://www.healthycanning.com/dill-pickles](https://www.healthycanning.com/dill-pickles). and making approved modifications (sugar, salt, dry spice amounts). In my latest iteration, I skipped the sugar and the red pepper flakes, and the flavour was close, but not quite the same. Now I noticed that the ingredient list for Valsic contained Potassium Metabisulfate. I’ve used it before for winemaking sterilization, and fully recognize its smell as the smell of storebought pickle jars.
So my question is, could I add Metabisulfite to my dill pickle recipe? Could it do something negative like affect the acidity? It is a preservative in itself, so I wouldn’t imagine it would hurt, but I can’t seem to find any information on its use in home pickling.
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by Tsevetochek