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Pickles and ferments
All Containers›Shop by use case›Pickles and ferments›What goes wrong›Hollow picklesShop all pickles and ferments →
What goes wrong

Hollow pickles

By Dwight Davis, Founder

Updated

On this page5
A hollow pickle is mostly a sourcing problem rather than a process one. Most of them were hollow in the field, and the ones that were not come from delay or from a ferment that ran too hard.

The published causes

  • Faulty growth of the cucumber itself. It grew hollow.
  • Too long between harvest and brining.
  • Fermentation that ran too fast.
  • A brine that was too strong or too weak.

Why this one is a buying decision

The first cause is not something your process can reach, which makes this the failure most worth solving upstream. A grower who picks to size and gets the crate to you the same day solves it; a pallet of whatever the field produced, bought on price, does not. This is the clearest case on the property for why the sourcing page sits in Getting Started rather than being an afterthought.

Hollow cucumbers also float, which means they are partly self-sorting if you are watching for it. A float test before brining will not catch every one, but it catches enough to be worth the minute it takes on a doubtful crate.

The two you do control

Delay is the one to design around. The clock in this craft starts in the field, not in the kitchen, and a long lapse between picking and brining is named against hollow pickles and against shriveled ones both. Brine on the day where you can.

A ferment running too fast is a temperature question and belongs with the temperature window. Fast is not a virtue here: the published three to four weeks at 70 to 75F is the shape of a ferment that works, and a crock that finished in ten days in a warm room has not done well, it has done something else.

What to do with them

Hollow pickles are not unsafe, they are unsellable at a premium. Decide in advance whether they are a relish, a second-grade line or waste, because that decision made during a packing day is the one that becomes a quality problem in a jar with your name on it.

References

National Center for Home Food Preservation. Named-problem tables for fermented pickles and for pickled foods. nchfp.uga.edu
United States Department of Agriculture. Complete Guide to Home Canning, Guide 6: Preparing and Canning Fermented Foods and Pickled Vegetables. Revised 2015, National Center for Home Food Preservation. nchfp.uga.edu
Written from federal regulation and published extension guidance, not from a laboratory. An acidified food is a federal category with a filed process behind it, and your state enforces it. Anything here is a starting point for a conversation with your state department of agriculture and a process authority, not a determination that you comply.