Pickle Expert Guesses Cheap vs Expensive Pickles | Price Points | Epicurious

I'm Bob McClure and I'm a pickle expert whoo okay so I'm gonna open up jar a here and take a look so the first thing I noticed is the brine and this is like very yellow it's very tinted which to me indicates that it's got something in it that is making it that yellow color normal Brian's that are distilled vinegar water and salt don't have that but I do see some of the cucumber's they've been chopped off so that's an interesting thing that that manufacturers they usually cut off the top so that they can pack it in the jar and that it doesn't stick out and stuff like that I would say that smaller manufacturers probably don't go through that process because it's an extra step it smells it smells pretty good so it smells like a natural product there's nothing jumping out at me that says you know calcium chloride or potassium sorbate or anything like that that's in it it smells vinegary it smells like a dill pickle so dill is a pretty common weed that has been used for centuries for flavoring food pickling you can make it with fish dishes it's it's a spice so it adds flavor to food and you can use it fresh out of your garden or you can dry it and you can use the seeds to add flavoring I'm gonna open this one up and check it out so this one's got a cloudy brine that's really interesting usually when you see a cloudy brine you're you're looking at two different types of pickles the cloudy brine is a fermented product one that generally goes in the cooler or the refrigerated section of the stores and ones with a clearer brine they go through a heating process a cooking process that that lets them sit on your shelf or in your pantry for a long period of time for a fermented pickle you're actually exposing the the cucumber to the natural microbes that are in the air the microbes start to eat the the salt and start to generate more microbes and more bacteria and that that lactic acid is what gives it the sour taste and that takes usually anywhere from you know two to four weeks so if you had pickles in the past and you've come across the terms you know new dill half sour full sour three quarter sour that's dealing with specifically fermented pickles and much like beer or wine it takes time for that that's who occur I'm gonna smell the Brian and pickle be here this definitely smells like a fermented brine which typically don't contain any vinegar at all in them but it does smell good just much smells like a good a good pickle so we're gonna go ahead and dive into pickle a here and then take a bite again it smells like a normal dill pickle so it definitely tastes like a vinegar pickle to me there's nothing too strong in the front end you know I don't taste anything chemically but the thing that's throwing me off is the yellow so that generally tells me that may be done by a larger manufacturer that's looking to preserve or extend extend shelf life also mention that the pickle is fairly flimsy right it's cut at both ends it's not like crunchy which is what you're gonna want in any pickle so you know if I'm really trying to I'm bending this thing and it's not really you know going anywhere you can also actually see right here it's a little bit kind of translucent like glassy looking and gray either that could be like an older pickle it may have sat on the Shelf too long or it just could be like a lower quality cucumber to start with so here's here's pickle B you know interestingly enough it doesn't have its ends cut like pickle a does so this is generally indicating to me that you know this is probably a smaller manufacturer that's good there's more water balance in there than I taste in in pickle aid and pickle B when you're making up your brine it's a mix of vinegar water and salt right and depending on the ratio of the vinegar water and salt you're gonna get different flavors and finding that like perfect balance is from my perspective what you're looking for in a pickle so these are definitely two dill pickles they're just very different pickles pickle a is a shelf-stable pickle that has vinegar brine in it that gives it a very acidic tangy up-front taste and pickled B is a fermented pickle that just uses salt and water and perhaps maybe a little bit of vinegar at the at the finish if I were to guess I would say that pickle a is the more mass-produced lower-cost pickle and pickle B is the more expensive version of the tool okay so let's find out all right 329 of course and 932 accord it doesn't surprise me because again I can tell from in pickle a I can see the the cuts are very uniform and usually small manufacturers can't can't do that so a larger manufacturer can generally do that and their their production capacity is going to be much higher than a smaller manufacturer which is generally going to cost more and usually translate to a higher price on shelf pickle B I noticed that it's it's a fermented brine but has you know probiotics and fermentation in it which means that it takes more time if you lean more towards a fermented flavor and taste pickle B would be the choice that you would go with but my taste preference is lean more towards pickle a which is a vinegar pickle it has more Tang upfront it's what I'm used to and what I what I like I do wish that you know there were better quality cucumbers and no additive ingredients that you know the elongated the shelf-life unnaturally but I do like this flavor profile so here are two jars of what appeared to be spicy pickles see what it's like oh yeah lots of yellow juice coming out so this one smells like it's it's definitely a vinegar pickle I do smell like a lot of dried dill and that is like a scent that you will definitely notice if you smell fresh dill versus dry do it so I look at this and I see there are spear cuts and there are half cuts in there which means that the cucumber is going to be firmer it's just a bigger cut of pickle right there and it's going to be crunchy err I also noticed a lot of fresh inclusions so there's fresh dill in this one and there's a fresh hot pepper in there which is is going to be more expensive to to buy as a manufacturer again because it goes bad quicker the fresh ingredients usually cost cost more money so I'm going to open it and smell it as well this definitely has it more vinegar smell and I smell apple cider vinegar apple cider is gonna smell more sweet off the nose it smells more fresh and I'll show you what that that dill dill dill weed looks like so right here you know it looks kind of like a piece of seaweed or something like that but when it's dry you know it looks looks like a flower when it's fresh it looks like a flower but that dill right there is gonna give it a nice fresh fresh flavor so I'm gonna try both pickles and see see what we get yeah so definitely a yellow pickle this is a spirit pickle you know pickles will come in all different types of cuts and you know they could be whole they could be sliced that could be speared they could be slab for hamburgers this looks like a pretty non crunchy pickle but well we'll see we'll see how spicy it is too because that's the type of flavor profile that we're dealing with here it's got a little kick that's nice it's it's not overpowering so its flavored nicely with its spice it's way way salty but I do like the spice because it's not overpowering it's it's certainly over in my opinion over salted to get me to want to want to eat more eat more product so this one that's actually really interesting some of the the pickles aren't as I mentioned earlier they're they're not speared there's actually one you know kind of big big chunk right up top right so that's indicating to me that this is more of a handmade product so this one's hot very hot it's got a habanero pepper in it this to woo this to has a lot of sodium content in it but it's not bad it's not overpowering like pickle a is what I noticed in pickle B is that it's using habanero pepper which is a very hot pepper so if you're shopping you know for a spicy pickle and you have a low spice tolerance a habanero pickle is gonna be probably way too hot for you so you you can look at this pepper and know stay away from this when it's cut in half like that it opens up all the oils the hot oils that are in the pepper and it gets them throughout the jar I mean it gets them up to spice very very quick so this manufacturer can make a fresh product have it be spicy very quick and then it'll still be crunchy on the shelf whereas what I see in pickle a is chopped ingredients that could be dehydrated and it's probably very uniform that the spice is very balanced so I do like the spice in this one thing you'll notice and in pickle B is that this cucumbers actually like cut in half compared to pickle A's cucumber which have their ends cut off and look pretty pretty uniform this is picklebee's cucumber is gonna be crunch here because it's more whole and more fully intact so if I were to take a guess I would have to say that that pickle B is the the more expensive version and pickle a is the the lower-cost version [Music] okay 372 I'm pickle a and 1065 on pickle B so in pickle a there were some things that I I really did did like I like the flavor profile of the bride which is again the vinegar water and salt in there and I i certainly really liked the spice it wasn't overpowering pickle a has a really nice balance for those who you know might want something a little bit more mild but it is certainly very high in the sodium content so if you're watching your sodium or if you prefer to have less salt I would go towards towards a pickle B for a spicy pickle this is a fantastic balance it's not over salted and you're gonna enjoy it especially if you put it on a sandwich or eat them right out of the jar great so we've got two more pickle jars here so I definitely smell like maple maple syrup or it is kind of oaky in its flavor the cucumbers are you know pretty uniform in size which leads me to think that it might be more of a larger manufacturer if pickle a is a larger manufacturer that's adding like a bourbon style to it or a maple style they're probably not going to be using real maple syrup or a real bourbon they're gonna use like an extract or something that's more of a formulation of that to get that flavoring whereas you know pickle pickle B I see that there's you know a fresh you know habanero in there I noticed that the cucumber sizes are varying in size I do smell maple I do smell something that's like oaky in it now if it's a smaller manufacturer they very well may be using real real bourbon or a real maple syrup that is gonna drive up the cost and thereby be be more expensive and hopefully more more flavorful too so I'm gonna I'm gonna taste pickle a first so it's definitely very sweet it tastes like maple syrup it's kind of oaky so it may have some kind of bourbon a flavor to it or flavoring the cayenne pepper here as I mentioned is a really nice flavored pepper it's not too hot it's not too mild but the flavoring definitely tastes very heavy on the maple so I can't really tell if it's real maple syrup or flavoring or bourbon flavoring or something like that but it's it's pretty heavy on that end and let's try pickle be here it's the habanero is really hot so that's taking a lot of the flavoring away I can't really taste much in terms of a story and a balance but that's not to say that it is less expensive or more expensive it could just be the way the the balance of the brine is tasting and the pepper is is interacting with the rest of the the spices in the jar I see this pickle be having you know less uniformity in terms of its cuts more fresh inclusions in it then I am in pickle a when pickle a I see some dried spices I see a lot of uniformity and I'm tasting more flavoring type and if if it was real then I would say it'd be a very expensive product if it turns out that this is the less expensive one then I will say it's it's definitely a flavoring that is going in there and probably not the real the real deal so if I were to guess I would say pickle B is the more artisanal higher cost one and pickle a is the the lower cost more and more mass-produced [Music] 384 for pickle a and 1598 for pickle B so there's a huge price difference between pickle a and pickle B pickle B they're probably going to be using the real deal they're going to be using real bourbon real maple syrup and even though it is it is more expensive I I do like the the story profile and again the journey that pickle a takes you through and that's I think merely because the way the sugar balances out with the spicy pepper the spicy pepper the Cayenne that's in there is less spicy than picklebee's habanero and the habanero pickle is very spicy and pickle B and it overpowers a lot of the other flavors that I think would come out if a different different pepper work or to be used so here we've got two new jars of pickles yeah so a lot of stuff in pickle a is floating to the top so there's dried ingredients I'm not sure it could be sesame seed and clove and onion the brine as smells like it has a nice flavor like some apple cider vinegar and some white vinegar as part of the brine it smells balanced the cucumber's they do look a little translucent so this could be a sign of aging the product has been sitting on the Shelf a little bit too long I'm just gonna pull a few out because I'm noticing also another thing about you know what we had in these pickles that they're there's some varying sizes in pickle A's product that I don't see in picklebee's product pickle B looks pretty pretty uniform what's an interesting fact in the pickle industry is that larger manufacturers so they're pretty consistent you're like what do they do with all the rest of the inconsistent cucumber cuts well they turn it into relish so all those inconsistencies get turned into another product okay it's very very green it's like a split pea soup it smells sweet smells a little watery nothing overpowering like I smell in in pickle a but put some on a plate here I do see some mustard seed coming up that's a flavoring it's a very common ingredient that you see in pickles but you can see from these two pickle hey looks like darker which again could be aging or the quality of the cucumber but it does look more fresh and more natural than pickle breeze brine so I'm gonna taste one and see see what we get so this is a pickle eh that's good so it's very sweet off the front but I don't taste a lot of too much sugar I taste a lot of apple cider vinegar which is really refreshing because it's a nice way of balancing out too much too much sugar if it's a sweet pickle and there's there's no pepper in the jar when I didn't see that in pickle a or pickle B this is gonna be called like a sweet pickle or a bread and butter pickle people always ask me why do they call it bread and butter well during the Great Depression people needed a food source right so cucumbers were fairly easy to grow they were inexpensive to grow so in between some bread and some butter and then you could put some fresh cucumbers so it got the name bread and butter so this is a very pickle B is a very sweet pickle I don't teach taste too much vinegar tastes a little bit but I taste a lot of sugar and I'm not even sure it's it's real sugar because it tastes very very candy like which is gonna make me assume that it's it's some kind of a food - its corn syrup my hands are sticky from touching the brine I think a it's probably gonna be a higher cost product because of the flavor balance that I'm getting in that penny ingredients that are included and pickled bee is the less expensive more manufactured product of the two okay pickle a is 1598 a quart and pickle B is 264 upcourt so that's C that's a huge price difference I would say that for my box pickle A's flavor and texture in the cucumber and what I'm getting out of it as a as a sweet pickle is it's totally worth the money so when you're out looking for pickles look for fresh ingredients look for a balance brine that gives you a nice nuanced flavor and story throughout your food journey and last but not least you want one that crunches everybody wants a crunchy pickle so finding a pickle that has a brighter colored flesh not neon green or yellow but brighter colored flesh as opposed to gray or translucent or some other color is going to give you that crunchy pickle that you you really want

Channel: Epicurious

Views: 2,067,895

Rating: 4.8067923 out of 5

Keywords: cheap vs expensive, pickles, price points, pickle, pickle expert, cheap, expensive, cheap pickles, expensive pickles, cheap vs expensive pickles, cheap expensive, cheap vs expensive food, expert, cheap v expensive, best pickles, dil pickle, spicy pickle, alcohol infused pickle, bread and butter pickle, how pickles are made, eating pickles, making pickles, how to make pickles, price points pickles, pickle pickles, dill, expert break down, make pickles, sour pickles, epicurious

Id: LBMhHbkXcuU

Length: 19min 16sec (1156 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 15 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/Kn14]

Series is getting a bit long in the tooth if they’ve resorted to pickle tasting.

[u/Mox_Fox]

I watched the first couple minutes of this video the other day but 19 minutes is just too long for some pickle guessing.

[u/[deleted]]

I love this series, but it's ripe for satire

-e- btw did anyone ever guess wrong?

[u/SylveonGoals]

I mean I dont even like pickles all that much but all of these I can see which ones are cheaper pretty easily. yellow is the mass produced, green is the "artisanal".

[u/whYamiheRedad]

The fact that people can dedicate their lives to pickles is so sad to me.

[u/moody_dudey]

He claims manufacturers cut off the ends of pickles so that they can fit them in the jar, but that's just not true... Even many "artisans" cut off the ends to keep them crisp. I don't know if it works, but that's the reason.

How's this guy an "expert" if he doesn't even know that?