Pickling green tomatoes

Combining several online recipes, I used a ratio of 4 pints water, 1 pint vinegar, 1/2 cup of kosher salt, plus spices to pickle about a gallon and a half of various size green tomatoes. The recipes ratios varied all over the place. The cure time varied from three days to 6 months. Some said to refrigerate;some said not. These pickles were not canned.

Fridge or not? How long can/will they keep? Is the salt/vinegar preservative enough at that ratio? Would canning make a difference? Comments on ratios.

I have used a 1 to 1 ratio of cider vinegar to water with 1 cup salt for every 4 cups water to can green tomatoes for many many years. the liquid is poured in hot and then processed in a boiling water bath. shelf life is years, in fact we are currently using 2006 pickles.
Some just pour in the hot liquid and put on lids but the key is that the lids must seal.-Dick

You have to can them or keep in the fridge.

The Wife has made some magnificent pickled green tomatoes, but they're not canned so they must be refrigerated (I actuallyl like slightly cool and crunchy anyway).

We used a vac-sealer a la ccrush.

Do you have to cook them in the liquid for them to pickle, or can you just dump them raw into the cold brine?

generally the brine is brought to a boil to dissolve the salt and bring out the flavorings. Then the hot brine is poured into the jars which are filled with the raw veg.

let sit an hour or two then put in the fridge.

Just a bit of clarification, as there are so many ways to pickle tomatoes and given how tricky pickling can be, I'd hate for anyone to start something likely to fail.

teatpuller's method is correct for refrigerator/quick pickles. These need to be refrigerated once the jars have cooled down. If you want crispy tomatoes, I'd recommend against cooking the tomatoes. Instead, as teatpuller describes, place the tomatoes in jars and cover with the hot brine.

You also can pour cold brine over green tomatoes and then ferment them. Once fermentation is done to your liking, you can refrigerate them or can them (I haven't tried the latter). You want to use cold brine for this method as apparently boiling the brine may eliminate/reduce some of the good stuff you need for fermentation. I'm currently trying this for the second time. I tried this a few years ago and the tomatoes weren't good. We had sufficient green tomatoes this year that I thought I'd try it again. Fermentation is occurring, but I'm having to skim a thicker mold off the top of the crock that I usually have to with my cucumber pickles.

You can also can green tomatoes. I recently canned some using low temperature pasteurization and a bit of calcium chloride. I'm hoping that the low temp technique and the calcium chloride will mean that the tomatoes stay crisp. I'm waiting a few months before sampling, so no successes to report just yet. I made seven quarts of these, so fingers are crossed!

And, one last note - - brines are generally different depending on how the tomatoes will be stored. You can't necessarily use a refrigerator pickle brine for a canned pickle brine. For example, for canned green tomatoes, I'd want at least 50% vinegar (at 5% acidity). With refrigerator green tomatoes, you can go much lower. And, fermented green tomatoes generally are vinegar-free - - there the concern is instead amount of salt.

Ronna

I'm thinking about refrigerator pickled tomatoes. Thanks !

My friend the farmer has a copius amount of green tomatoes and a short wet muddy 30 minutes yielded 10 gals of 'greenies'.
Apple cider vinegar, water (1:1) 1/3 cup canning salt, dill, garlic, calcium citrate and a few dry hot chiles per quart jar for zing and a few hours work resulted in the 14 qts you see pictured here. I water bath can these and have been doing this for 30 years with no failures. Slicing results in a better packing fraction and I am keeping the small ones for refrigerator pickles in 1/2 gal jars.
We recently ran out of the last batch i made a few years ago, so the green bounty was welcomed.
I would like to do pickles but the dry growing season did not produce enough. I would purchase a crate of ' Kirby' but with the situation in Mexico about cilantro and now cucumbers, I hesitate.
I still have greenies and there is so much left on the ground that I could never can even a small fraction.-Richard

Looks good! where to get decent cider vinegar in bulk? Lot of the stuff you see in jugs is cider "flavored"

teatpuller wrote:Looks good! where to get decent cider vinegar in bulk? Lot of the stuff you see in jugs is cider "flavored"

I use SureFine, $3/gal at Woodman's.
It's flavored but cost effective.
Frankly I have not noticed any difference in the finished product compared to Heinz.-Richard