I used my new box of Kosher salt and made the correction suggested by Jams to correct for difference in weight and size of salt crystals. The brine tasted ok. I made 20 qts of pickles.
Don't use table salt -- the iodine can color your pickles (my pickled garlic turned blue). Having said that, this may not be a problem with cucumbers as they are already green...
Actually pickling salt is a very fine salt while Kosher salt is very large crystals. Also, because of its large sized grains, the volumes need to be adjusted since it takes a lot more of the large-grained Kosher salt to provide an equivalent amount of salting power to the recipe (assuming the recipe calls for pickling salt). Further complicating the conversion, not all Kosher salts are alike - Diamond and Morton Kosher salts are different sizes. You'll need to check the packaging or perhaps the website to find how much of the salt is equivalent to table or pickling salt. All of these salts are very inexpensive, so it's probably a lot easier to just get a box of pickling salt.
Yup, Kosher salt has no additives but you must use the salt based on weight not volume. 1 cup + 2 tablespoons of Morton Kosher Salt = 1 cup Morton Canning & Pickling Salt
Yes. Salt is salt---well sort of. Pickling salt has no additives, including no iodine and no whatever they put it in salt to keep it from caking. (Pickling salt's disadvantage is that no additives means that moisture can cause it to make a nice hard brick in the box.) Those additives can make the brine a bit cloudy, but that may not matter at all, depending on the kind of pickles you're making. However, I have no idea whether kosher salt even has the same additives as table salt. Frankly, I'd use what you have on hand. Sometimes it's hard to even find pickling salt.
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