Why does my jar of Kosher dills have “refrigerate after opening” on the label?
They’re pickled for crying out loud.
The brine they’re sold in may not have enough salt or acid in it to suppress bacterial or fungal growth.
Refrigerating also keeps them nice and crisp. Mmmm…cold dill pickles…
‘Refrigerate after opening’ labels mean something about the safety of the food if it’s not kept cold. If it was just to make them crunchy, it’d say ‘For an even crisper pickle, store your <brand name> Kosher Dills in the refrigerator’. Probably it’s because the brine used to make Kosher pickles won’t prevent bacteria from growing at room temperature. The brine is water saturated with NaCl; it’s very salty, but some bacteria could still grow in this environment.
One might also wonder why pickles are called Kosher, since pickles with pork or pickles with beef and cheese would be nasty and there are no animal ingredients, not even byproducts like gelatin or rennet. It’s apparently just because these pickles were associated with delis that served Kosher foods. Like a lot of foods that don’t contain animal ingredients, Kosher pickles might have a certification mark (Kosher parve, meaning the food contains neither meat nor dairy products) anyway because of the number of processed foods that contain animal-derived products that aren’t immediately evident. Kosher salt, incidentally, is so named because it is especially suitable for salting meats in a Kosher fashion (so as to remove all traces of blood).
Can I just assume that you have never had Texas BBQ?
If for example, the machine that slices the cucumbers were lubricated with animal fat,the pickles wouldn’t be parve or neutral. It it were pig fat, it wouldn’t be Kosher. If non-Kosher foods were processed in the same room the pickles wouldn’t be Kosher.
Of course, things bought at Circle K foods are not necessarily Kosher.
;j
No, that would be a cheeseburger.
There is a difference between Kosher and Kosher Style.
To be labeled Kosher the product preparation has to be approved by a Rabbi.
Kosher Style is the same without the approval.
Many food products are labeled “refrigerate after opening” to extend the shelf life after opening.
Or someone ate a pickle from a jar they had sitting in the back of the pantry for some unknown number of years and subsequently got a settlement out of the pickle company.