Combined Effect of Salts Mixture Addition and Brining in Hot Solution on the Korean Pickle Fermentation

Four different fermentation methods of Korean cucumber pickles were compared with conventional method, pickling in 10% NaCl solution at , in order to improve the storage stability. The methods studied were brining the cucumbers in hot() 10% NaCl solution(method A), addition of KCl and into the hot salt solution(method B) addition of a sodium salts mixture of phosphates, nitrite and citrate into half fermented pickles prepared by method B(method C), substituted nitrite and citrate with KCl in method C(method D). It was found from results that the method C and D reduced the decreasing rate of pH very significantly by more than 3 fold and method B also showed the reducing effect. However, higher total acidity was measured for method C and D, which was opposite to pH results. Changes in hardness of cucumber showed little difference to control while color of brining solution exhibited some difference in their Hunter values. Organoleptic comparison showed a clear effect of salts mixtures by receiving the significant higher scores in fresh cucumber flavor and lower values in yeast moldy and sour flavor for method C and D when those were compared to control.