5 replies to this topic

[estherlev]

Hello!

 

I need help in calculating the nutrition facts panel for a cucumber pickle recipe.

 

Since I am adding sugar and salt to my pickling brine, I am unsure how to calculate how much of the brine gets into the the pickle. 

 

Also, when calculating the nutrition facts, do I need to include the brine that would be left in the bottle or only the pickles that would be eaten? 

 

Thank you for your advice. 

 

Sincerely,

Esther Levy 

[PQAManager]

Can you send it off for testing?

[Scotty_SQF]

I believe there is some sort of program that can assist with nurtition panel labeling...I luckily have never had to do it, it was always an R&D department, but I remember asking and they have like a system/software, they entered some information in and it calculated it for them if I remember correctly.

[estherlev]

Thanks. 

 

We cannot send it to testing due to cost constrains.  

[MDaleDDF]

We have a program here, but you have to define your inputs to get any good info out of it.   So you'd definitely need to know how much brine it's soaking up, percentage of everything in the brine, etc.   Or so I think, I'm not in the pickle business.

If you only have this one product, I second sending it out.   How much did they quote you to test it?   I know our software isn't cheap either...

You could try something like this:     https://www.verywell...nalyzer-4157076

 

I have no idea how close to truth it is though.   I must say if you're a small place, your chances of anyone challenging whatever you go with is about zero.   I'm not telling you to do or not do anything, I just highly doubt you'll get bothered about it if the numbers are even semi-realistic.   We've been in business almost 70 years, and nobody has ever questioned a nutrition panel.   Ingredient statements, etc, yes.   Never a nut panel tho....

[SerenityNow!]

If you have access to nutrition software, I would suggest a multi-recipe process. I used Esha Genesis, which is my preference.  It you are doing manual, I'm sorry!

 

My first question is whether or not the pickling brine and the jar brine are going to be the same.  If it's the same, you can take the average cucumber weight (unbrined) and net weight of jar contents to figure the difference of the total brine. Some might prefer to create a single recipe with these weights and adding all other ingredients.

 

For absorption, you can pull some before brine/after brine, cucumber weights to get the average increase and go off that.

 

For the nutrition calculation I personally prefer to handle this as a multi-recipe product.   Others may prefer one recipe with all ingredients, I favor multi-recipes that make it easier in the future.  I will say that I tend to over think things 

 

1. Recipe #1 - I would first build the pickling brine recipe and save.  This is helpful if you would use the same pickling brine for other pickled products.
2. Recipe #2 - Create another recipe that for the brined pickle. It would consist of the weight of the cucumber and the pickling brine (recipe 1) average absorption weight. This would give your nutrition info on the brined pickle (without jar brine).
3. Recipe #3 - This recipe that would be for the finished jar.  It would consist of recipe #2 (brined pickle) weight, and recipe #1 (brine).  This would give your jar nutrition that you would break down per your serving size/RACC.  This version takes into account the jar brine as its part of the finished  product. There may be more absorption, migration and some people consume the brine.  Also, if you happen to use a different brine for pickling then what is used in the finished jar, you would create a recipe and use that in your finished jar recipe instead.

 

Others may have a different process, this is how I would tackle it.  My process has multiple recipes as I have worked in a facility that used the same base recipes for several different finished products.  So it helps to be able to pull in a base recipe instead of recreating it every time.  For instance, Recipe #2 can easily be added to different recipes, where maybe the jar would be larger and have more jar brine percentage than a smaller jar.  Or you can use Recipe #1 as a base and add sliced pickles, so on.  Saves time in the long run.

 

Hopefully i've described my, convoluted thought process in a way that it  makes sense.