Regular cukes will soften quickly, and because the skins are so thick they will be tougher to enjoy. When I buy cukes for salads, I use pickling types as their skins are very thin and crisp, and are not needed to be peeled off. Can't say the same about regular cukes, as they would be like biting into a hard tough skin, and softer inside. Pickling cukes are the #1 choice and MUST be used immediately after picking!! to get the best texture. Chilling in ice water can help to recrisp them, but its short term only, and will not fix/replace an older cukes' texture, or to get to be crisp again for a longer time. If sunken, rubbery, soft, old, they are not going to be as good for making crisp pickles. Long English cukes (sport), are usually sold in a shrink wrapped plastic. The reason is simple. If left out to air they dry out very fast and you end up with a poor texture again. They are bred to offer the softest skins that are found on all cukes. I wouldn't use any English cukes for pickles, but they are decent in fresh salads however. As to the crocks, you may want to see if cheap the lead tst kits used for tsting paint might work. A tiny chip of the glaze may be a way to see if the sample shows positive for lead. I think crocks made before 1960-1970 are are questionable, but correct me if I am wrong.

I still have the lime here (Mrs. Wages brand) and it did help to hold the cukes a bit firmer for the all vinegar sour pickles. I do not use alum anymore and because it still seems to be linked to aluminium and allzheimers I was not going to even try going any further with it. The lime was used, and the whole cukes were soaked in it for 24 hours in the fridge. I used huge stainless steel bowls that take up a whole shelf in the fridge. I cut off the tips of both ends prior to the soaking, They did get a long rinse afterwards, but even for that, there was a bit of white sediment in the brine after a few days. I also used a bit of tumeric for some color. They were quite pungent. I could have even added a bit of my acid blend and made them even more potent.. My sours are not fermented. They are just 100% plain white distilled vinegar, salt, and a little tumeric. My pickled pepperoncini are also done that way, but without the tumeric. My half sours are just a salt brine with a dash of vinegar added after they sit on the counter overnight. Ive also use the pickling lime for making some sweet mixed, but it was just for the cukes to soak in first. The amount of alum used in a 7 quart batch of sour pickles was something like about 2-3 teaspoons for the toatl amount of vinegar brine. With Pickle Crisp, you do have as slight flavor of chlorine, but that tends to dissipate once they are opened and allowed to 'breath' a few minutes before serving. A chilled pickle always seems to be a bit crunchier than at room temp. FYI> Rumford brand baking powder has no alum in it. Baking soda is basically bicarbonate of soda and nothing else. There is also a bakers ammonia that is still used today for some Swedish cookies and pasteries. I can't taste Pickle Crisp, but that might be because of the heat of the peppers, or the strength of the flavors and spices I use in regular pickles. Mrs. Wages and Ball mixes are the primary ingredients I use when making spiced pickles, and I add extra spices like dill, celery seeds, mustard seeds and such to the various kinds of pickles.There is nothing worse (besides a sour or mushy cuke) than a bland tasting pickle. A recent America Test Kitchen episode dealt with making a flaky pastery for a big berry tart. They mixed the butter and flour to a very course mix, then used their palms to press the flour into the butter lumps. This helped to spread the butter into thinner bits. Ever made puff pastry? I have, with excellent results. MUCH better than the Pepperidge Farm frozen stuff. It does take a long time, a cold work surface, lots of patience and lots of rolling between each chilling.

highalttransplant - we aren't going to be able to make you happy today and I understand why but please don't go looking for problems where none exist either. The real problem is that you jumped into a recipe you didn't understand upfront and then, rather than postponing it, you went ahead. And then when msdonnie and annie gave you the proper instructions within just a few minutes, you disputed their advice and went ahead and did it your way rather than follow their advice. We have all been there and done that and yes, it is frustrating, but it serves no purpose to blame or question the validity of the recipe or the assistance offered by the other posters. For future reference, understand that needing to make extra brine for a recipe has absolutely nothing to do with the safety of the recipe or whether or not it should be trusted. Extra brine may be needed for any number of reasons beyond the recipe author's control - the size of your cukes, the size of the slices, the way you fill the jars, the way you measure, etc. etc. etc. And making an additional batch of brine, as it is called for in the recipe in use, does not alter the safety of the product in any way. It is just more of the same stuff. This need has been discussed here often and is discussed at NCHFP and last I looked in the front section of BBB etc. books. And unless it is a recipe you have made before and so know that extra brine will be needed and made a note to yourself about that, it is not a batch you make ahead to have on hand. You fill the numbers of jars that you can, seal and process them, keep the rest of the pickles hot in the pan and whip up a second batch of brine in another pan then fill and process those jars. These are all things that are learned with experience and patience but we learn best when we own up to our own screw ups and move on. Dave

Sorry no, they will turn to mush once frozen, They are similar to regular peppers and contain a lot of water, so they tend to get quite soft when frozen and then thawed. If you remove the seeds you can called them 'Picante' sweet and hot peppers. I see them in some serve yourself things like cheese in brine, olives and a few other marinted veggies like mushrooms in some bigger supermarkets. I bought a few of the Picanti peppers not knowing they were the hot ones. But I guess thats why they are called picante. I grew a lot of sweet cherry peppers as you can never find them in any stores. I left the seeds in mine, however, and pierced each with a skewer right through both sides to get the brine inside. If you want to help them remain a bit more crisp for a longer term in picking brine, you can also add some of the calcium chloride which helps pickled foods from getting too soft when stored in vinegar. I use it in most of my dills and even in some sweet mixed pickles. It takes the place of Ball Pickle Crisp which was discontinued recently, but was the alternative to use instead of nasty, caustic lime soaks. I kind of wonder how yours would taste if a whole clove of garlic was packed inside each cherry pepper. Once pickled, garlic gets very mild too. I grow Music garlic with really big cloves and one clove can fit quite snugly inside an emptied out cherry pepper. Just a thought.. Add it to just a few per jar to see if you like that combo. I bet after that, all your hot peppers will get a clove of garlic stuffed into each. I recall some kind of meat stuffed in cherry peppers and commercially canned in glass jars too, but I would't try that as it would need a PC to can and that would really soften the cherry peppers too much. The cherry peppers should keep in the fridge for about a week with no handling excpet a good rinse and drain. I place a bunch in a big plastic zipper bag, but leave it partially open. They get a rinse in cold water, and well drained before they are placed in bags. I do that with pickling cukes and my delicate pepperoncini peppers and they keep nearly a week in the fridge that way. One way to help keep them longer would be to deseed as you would, and simply place them in a big container in the fridge with some full strength 5% vinegar and about half the pickling salt necessary. They should keep that way several weeks in the fridge without spoiling if they are submerged. Then, when you want to can them, you pour out that inital brine and fill the jars with a fresh brine made to the taste you prefer. That should help to hold them in 'suspension' a while. I hope you realize that all of this is my 'secret method' an isn't really a way to preserve per the 'experts' here, but it will work well if you keep your fridge colder than 38 degrees, like down to 34-36 degrees tops, and they will remain firm enough. I do hope that most of the hot cherry peppers have ripened to red color? Good luck!