Pickling

Pickling is the process of preserving food, typically vegetables, fruits or other plants, with acids. The technology can broadly be separated into two technologies, vinegaring and lacto-fermentation. Vinegaring is where acetic acid is added to a food submergerged in liquid and preservation occurs without fermentation. Lacto-fermentation makes use of a dilute brine (2-4% salt by total weight of the pickling mix) which allows halophilic microbes such as lactobacillus spp. to outcompete food spoiling microbes and generate lactic acid which preserves food. Lacto-fermentation is the primary method of production of foods like kimchi and saurkraut.