Tightwad Wednesday - Reusing Baggies & Pickled Chops

Posted on September 19, 2007 by Melissa
Filed Under Tightwad Wednesdays

Each week, I will test out two tips from the The Complete Tightwad Gazette, and on the following Wednesday I’ll review how they went and evaluate if it is worth my time/effort/money to continue with it.

I have mixed results for my first edition of the Tightwad Wednesday challenge. One of the tips I tried from The Complete Tightwad Gazette resulted in a positive change and the other one was hard to stomach (literally).

Washing and Reusing Baggies

Ironically, when I realized I’d be washing all my baggies for the week I noticed a trend toward using less baggies and more gladware. I guess knowing I’d have to wash and dry the baggies by hand was enough incentive for me to start relying more heavily on my non-disposable containers. That’s good!

Washing the baggies wasn’t difficult but I could never tell if I really got them clean. I’d put the baggies in the sink with the hot soapy water I use to wash plastic water bottles. I washed them twice just in case. Since grease can be a problem, make sure to wash your baggies in the clean dish water before any of the dirty dishes are in the sink.

From The Tightwad Gazette Drying them was an interesting task. I don’t have an air-dry dish rack so arranging them with chop sticks like Amy suggested wasn’t an option for me. I tried several different methods: the dishwasher rack, standing them up on towel on the counter, and hanging them from a hook. The dishwasher rack worked pretty well although I did have water spots.

According to The Complete Tightwad Gazette:

I never save any bag that was used to store meats. Greasy bags are hard to wash as well. … Most important, I never, ever reuse any bag that stored raw poultry.

Lovely! This is an important tip. The bags that held crackers or other dry goods turned out fine after washing. The bags that held something greasy were another matter. Even after washing it twice I couldn’t seem to get rid of the “film” on the inside. Gross. I don’t want to reuse those. I actually use a lot of baggies to store ½ pound portions of hamburger and chicken in my freezer. Bummer that I won’t be able to reuse those due the film factor.

I reused a few of the bags to store non-edibles and to store unused coupons destined for my friends. I also used one to crush up tortilla chips in then tossed it because of all the punctures.

All in all - I’ll probably continue this tip. It felt good avoiding “unnecessary” waste. I have decided to use non-disposable containers when brining and marinading meats so I won’t have to automatically throw out those baggies. Basically, if it has oil in it I will avoid a baggie. That will help maximize the amount of baggies I can reuse.

Sweet Pickled Chops

From The Tightwad Gazette I was intrigued by this idea when I first saw it because I’d love to find a good use for my leftover pickle juice. Eric loves pickle juice so if I could showcase it in a meal that would be great! This recipe calls for cooking pork chops topped with onions and ketchup in leftover sweet pickle juice. Unfortunately, it sounds better than it tastes.

When I saw how long the recipe wanted me to cook the pork chops, I knew I was in trouble. I decided to get the thickest chops I could find to try and make this work.

The recipe calls for baking these for an hour in a moderate oven. By the time 35 minutes passed I took pity on the poor chops and decided to remove them. They were like hockey pucks after braising in the boiling juice for so long. The color was pale and slightly yellow tinged on the edges. Not exactly appetizing. Despite the color it didn’t seem to absorb any of the pickle juice flavor. That was a little surprising to me, especially considering the smell.

Can I get fries with that? The kitchen smelled oddly like a McDonald’s hamburger. Then I realized the recipe was based on a combo of pickle juice, onions, and ketchup. How funny that the smell reminded me of a happy meal.

My brave husband ate the tough, dry chops despite my offers to make him another meal. He is a real trooper. He was not about to let an expensive cut of meat, like these pork chops, go to waste.

Folks, I’d call this recipe, as is, a failure. Maybe this was actually meant for a roast? If you want a good cheap recipe for pork chops that is a sure fire winner try my *awesome* pork chop reducipe. This recipe is standard in my repertoire and after the pickled recipe flopped I figured my personal recipe needed to get posted on the fly.

When I finish the next jar of pickles I may try to give this idea another shot. Next time, I’d pan fry the chops for nice color and texture and use the reduced pickle juice in a pan sauce. Or maybe I’ll use it as a marinade. I’ll have to think about it more. I’ll make sure to let you know when I revisit it. I haven’t given up.

Since the purpose of this recipe was to find a good way to use up pickle juice, I thought I’d offer some alternatives. Try these neat pickle juice ideas from ilovepickles.org:

Pickle and pickled pepper liquids make excellent marinades. They offer lots of gutsy flavor when simply combined with a little olive oil and chopped fresh herbs, or added to bottled Italian salad dressing.

Add cut-up raw carrots, celery sticks, broccoli and cauliflower florets, and red and green pepper strips directly to the jar of any type of leftover pickle juice. Make sure to keep these tangy tidbits refrigerated. The marinated veggies are great for snacking on straight from the jar or become an innovative addition to a crudité platter.

Slip sliced onions into a jar of sweet-hot bread and butter pickle juice. The “pickled” onions liven up turkey, chicken or ham sandwiches, as well as hamburgers.

Pickle liquid mixed in with the mayo can give a new twist to your time-honored potato salad.

Final thoughts

Washing baggies made me much more conscious of how often I use “disposable” means of storage. I have decided to use non-disposable plastic containers whenever possible. Although I will likely throw out bags used for meat and greasy items, I will definitely reuse the other bags.

This Sweet Pickled Chops recipe was doomed. The timing and cooking method was off. I think the concept of using pickle juice with pork is a very good one, it just needs some serious tweaking in order to make it a keeper. I will not be adding this recipe to my file and I will use other methods for reusing my leftover pickle juice (like in salad dressings and marinades).

Stay tuned for next week’s Tightwad Wednesday where I will be:

Using a bottle filled with rocks to lower the water used to flush toilets
Switching to powered milk for drinking

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Comments

2 Responses to “Tightwad Wednesday - Reusing Baggies & Pickled Chops”

Brip Blap on September 19th, 2007 7:50 pm

OK, the pork chops and pickle water thing put me RIGHT off my dinner…what we do with it is drop some mushrooms in the pickle water, or as you said some peppers. That’s nice. Cooking with it? I would have been skeptical and after your post, I won’t try it.

I think it’s better to avoid baggies altogether. I like baggies, and I try to reuse them for ‘dry’ goods like chips, crackers, etc. - but if something wet or sticky goes in there like meat or pasta, forget it. I think (although I couldn’t prove this) that you’d waste more water cleaning it than the energy you’d save reusing it.

In those cases I try to stick to my nice little Glad reusable snap-cover containers. I can freeze anything in there, they wash out in seconds, and they are - so far - pretty much indestructible. The only thing that killed one so far is a particularly persistent tuna salad.

I guess what I’m getting at is I think it’s better to avoid baggies if at all possible, but definitely reuse them until they get sticky - then just chuck ‘em!
Melissa on September 20th, 2007 6:33 pm

Brip Blap - Mushrooms and peppers in the pickle juice sounds wonderful! We’re definitely trying that one. No more pickled pork chops for us!

With baggies, we still have a couple of cases where we like to use them :
- In the freezer (we have a small freezer and it’s easier to fit bags in than it is plastic containers)
- For things like hotdogs once we’ve pierced the original container. We haven’t found a good size plastic container to use that works as well as a baggie.

I think we’re going to try and do better about using baggies from now on, and use reusable containers instead. With those two exceptions, I can’t think of too many ocassions where I’d need to use them anymore.