Make low reduced salt vinegar pickles olives capers from canned ones Low sodium recipe

How to take out salt and vinegar from store bought canned pickles, olives, capers.

Make tasty reduced salt and vinegar salads and sandwiches.

Salt and vinegar are great for preserving food. Pickled food can stay edible indefinitely or at list for a very very long time. The only thing is - to eat that food, that has so much salt and vinegar in it that it never spoils is not very pleasant nor good.

Pickles, olives, capers are some of the food that is made with the help of a huge amount of salt and vinegar and using it straight from the can or jar brings all that salt and vinegar into your salad, entrée, sandwich or anything you ad it to or mix it with.

You can always remove excess salt and vinegar from any store bought pickled food and this method that I'm describing bellow is very easy and works well for olives, cucumbers, capers and many other salty vinegary foods.

Cut your olives.



pic: cut green pimento olives

First you need to drain your pickles or olives or whatever it is that you are using completely and ahead of the time when you intend to use it so that it dries from that brine solution it was in. After you drain them you can cut it in halves or smaller size pieces. Smaller pieces release more vinegar and salt.

Keep your drained pickled foods in a glass jar with a lid in the refrigerator until you are ready to use it. You can take out and drain a portion of your pickles only and leave the rest in the brine if you don't use it all at the same time. I noticed that capers or olives keep well for a very long time after being drained. That tells you how much salt and/ or vinegar they have absorbed already while being in the brine solution.

If you want to reduce salt and vinegar even more and make it really low sodium food, just soak your picked items in fresh water for a while then drain the soaking water also. It's best to use cold water for soaking so that it doesn't extract additional flavor from pickles or olives since you are going to discard that water.

Keep the jars with your pickled foods always refrigerated. If you try the water you soaked it in you may be quite surprised how salty/ vinegary it is. You'd never use that water for any dish so no point using your pickles when they are loaded with all that vinegar/ salt.

You can even change the soaking water more than once if it's still too salty. It's not unusual for pickles, olives and especially capers to be preserved in a very strong brine initially, probably much stronger than necessary but it guaranties that the stuff wont spoil for a long time.



pic: pimento and almond olives
take out the vinegar. reduce vinegar and salt in pickled olives

Using salt and vinegar will keep food fresh but you can remove it from food when you're ready to use it. That will make your meal even tastier and fresher.



pic: glass jars with green olives
whole olives in brine solution. drained and cut olives

in this post: reduce salt and sodium in pickled foods low salt pickles olives capers take out vinegar and salt from store bought pickles olives capers in a jar/ can green pimento and almond cut olives