Salty Pickle Doom
Written By: Matan
Yesterday, my friend Melissa received a package from her dad in the mail containing DVDs, a CD, books, and a pickle. The sheer absurdity of it is impressive, perhaps only because it would never occur to me, nor any other reasonable human being, to mail a pickle. But there it was in front of us. The mail pickle. This description alone should have been enough for us to immediately deposit it in the trash, but it only gets worse.
Van Holten’s “Hot Mama” pickle is a fascinating object. It’s a rather large pickle floating in brine in a plastic sack. The “Hot Mama” is advertised as the spicy variety. The front of the sack announces to the world “contents: one pickle” and proudly displays that the product “needs no refrigeration.” Well of course it’s ok to mail this pickle. It needs no refrigeration. It contains 4,770 milligrams of sodium. For reference, the daily recommended maximum intake of sodium for a healthy adult is 2,300 milligrams. For the mathematically inept, this pickle has more than twice as much salt as anyone should eat in a day.
Again, all of this should have made us want to get rid of this horrifying thing as quickly as we could manage, but curiosity is a powerful thing. We had to try it! What other opportunity would we get to eat such an oddity?
Opening the package, slicing up the massive pickle, and bring a piece toward my lips, I might have thought, “this is a horrible idea. Why, oh why, am I doing this?” I thought no such thing. I was too busy imagining how awesome this pickle might be. It could have been a hidden treasure. Salty foods taste awesome, so obviously foods with deadly levels of salt would be even better. Pickles are great, and the postal system is pretty nifty, so the combination of the two would be a masterpiece. How naïve I was back then. How simple and ignorant.
Upon placing the sliver of the pickle in my mouth, there was only salt. Spicy? No. Pickle? No. Brine? No. I tasted only salt, I felt only salt, and my eyes watered with a mild hallucination that can best be described as salty. I have a sneaking suspicion that Van Holten has discovered a chemical that is saltier than salt, which they are molding into a pickle shape, dying green, and selling to unwitting consumers. I wish I were exaggerating. This is magnitudes saltier than anything I’ve ever put in my mouth, which happens to include water from the Dead Sea.
Nothing like 700% of your daily intake of salt to really get the day moving along!
Did we stop there? Of course not. That would have been intelligent, or at least a facsimile of it. I rinsed it. For a significant amount of time, I stood in front of the sink, running the demon pickle under cool water and wringing it out over and over, hoping against hope that it would make the pickle edible. What a fool I was. After at least ten minutes of this utterly ludicrous process, we tried the pickle again. No change. Just another a-salt on our mouths.
After the initial retching and burning, I was able to function again, but the saltiness didn’t leave. Lingering like a sore, I continued to taste the salt well into my fourth cup of water. I woke up this morning with a stomach ache and the taste of salt on my breath. I offer this story as a warning to any of you curious and foolish enough to do as I did. I implore you not to. It will only end in salty, salty tears.
Reminds me of the pickles you can get at the fair that will Peel yourlips off with one bite. Those aren’t so much salty as ridiculously sour though. If I want to go comatose from salt I can always grab some fries at my local McDonalds
Looks like Hot Mama wasn’t your favorite, maybe one of our other flavors will be more to your taste. Our Pickle-In-A-Pouch comes in Dill, Hot, Kosher, Sour, and our newest flavor sweet. There is no question that most pickles have lots of salt but when comparing the same serving size of our pickle it has less salt than, cheese, beef jerky, and pretzels.
All the Best!
Steve
Not everyone can handle the Hot Mama. My brother is a life-long pickle addict and enjoys the Hot Mama sliced and on a hamurger. Apparently his favorite for just eating is the BIG PAPA.
BIG
PAPAAAAAA
YESSIR
Bread and Butter pickles are obviously the only pickles worth eating.
Pickles don’t make the man. The man makes the pickles
Oh man. I’ve been tempted for awhile now to give one of these sack pickles a try. Big Papa in particular.
Now, I don’t think I will. Not risking that kind of salt levels.
To be fair, I think all pickles are salty. It is just the HOT MAMA in particular that is so very very salty. Maybe? Big Papa is fine on all counts.
Maybe Steve Byrnes will come back to give us a clue.
I am a pickle addict. Even thinking about them right now is making my mouth water. Kosher crunchy dills are my absolute favourites; as sour as you can make a pickle, and I’ll have… several. In a bowl. As a snack.
To prove my point, within the last paragraph to the beginning of this sentence I went down to Safeway and bought two jars of pickles. Thanks, dudes. My sodium levels are about to fucking skyrocket.
Anyways, I bought one of those Hot Mamas at a closing-down-sale for a Hollywood Video. The bag was dusty. I have no idea how long it’d been there, but it was a dollar, and I’ll be gorramed if I’m going to pass up a dollar spicy pickle. It was *horrendous*. We could barely finish it. It was like a sour pickle filled with Satan’s Ass. It was like a pedophile watching Toddlers & Tiaras, alternating between, “These are awesomely sexy children” and then “BUT DEAR GOD LOOK WHAT THEY DRESS THEM IN”.
…is this comment going to get me arrested? I fear I am not making sense anymore. Forgive me.