Maggots? Salvageable?

[crandell]

Need advice! I have a gallon crock of brine pickles that are a month
old, and it appears that some fruit flies somehow got to the batch, as
there are now some small maggots on the inside walls of the crock and
in the scum that formed on the surface. Before I pour them out and
toss them, I thought I'd ask this crowd if they should be salvageable.
Would the maggots just be on the top? Or would they have started at
the bottom and eaten through the pickles? There's a good amount of
brine above the top of the pickles and they're weighted down well.
I've skimmed off the scum and the maggots floating on top, and I
pulled a pickle out and there don't appear to be any maggots on it.
But would some have eaten inside some of the pickles, or can they not
live below the surface of the brine? I'm assuming the mere presence of
maggots shouldn't be an issue as long as they're not in the food
itself, considering some people intentionally eat them in other
cultures? I've done a number of batches of ferments and never had this
problem before.

Thanks,
Lee

[Jay Bazuzi]

I'm sure I would throw it out, but that's due to my sensibilities, not to specific knowledge about food safety.

-J

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[Stacie Boschma]

I had a batch of brined whole vegetables infected with fruit flies earlier this year. A few years back, a young batch of sourdough starter got similarly infected. I have a few thoughts:

First, I think that the eggs and larvae are a surface phenomenon. The eggs would have been deposited at the surface, and it appeared to me that the larvae were operating right along the top of the batch. So it's entirely possible that you could scoop out the larvae and things would be fine.

However, as a second point, I'd note that my sourdough starter had clear mold colonies starting where fruit flies had become entrapped. So there's a danger that in their travels, they may have encountered bacteria that could make your batch toxic. I don't know enough about the pH and inhibitory qualities of fermenting organisms to speak to that, but the concern is great enough that, like Jay, I'd just toss it.

If you're deeply committed and the fly infestation is new, I guess you could try removing the larvae, draining the vessel, rinsing the pickles thoroughly, then putting them in a fresh vessel with new brine.

Good luck. If you try to salvage it, let us know how it turns out.

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Stacie Boschma
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404-259-1717

"I have had the wind knocked out of me, but never the hurricane." Jeffrey McDaniel

[kurt]

Maybe the larvae are edible, too?

I found one mention of pickled larvae on the internet:

Larvae of the wasp "V. flaviceps may be prepared cooked, fried, or pickled." 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vespula_flaviceps

[crandell]

Reporting back ... Sandor Katz was nice enough to respond to an email
from me, and he said the maggots were just a surface phenomenon and I
could just skim them off and clean up the top of the crock. I did that
and tried a pickle below, which was fine. But I'm just having back
luck with this batch -- after dealing with the maggots, it turns out
most of the batch is very mushy. I don't think that's related to the
maggots though. Even the smallest of the cucumbers turned out to have
very mature seeds. Ugh.

[tomg]

I have noticed that fruit flies (or what looks like them) are very
attracted to ferments. They have been hanging around the lids of
kefir, my kitchen compost container, and my pickles this summer. This
is my first year fermenting, and I have noticed a big increase in how
many are hanging around. In my opinion, the gases of fermentation make
a strong attraction for them.

I also wonder how much crossover there is when a person is fermenting
various thing in the same room.

[Elizabeth Evans]

The big concern with fruit flies and carryover would be acetic acid. Apparently they are big carriers of acetobacer, which are the bacteria that produce acetic acid (vinegar), and you may not want that in some of your cultures....if you do a search for fruit flies and wine there are a lot of articles on the problems on fruit flies contaminating wines with acetobacter (making it vinegary). In fact, this is the problem Louis Pasteur was working on when he developed pasterization.

Elizabeth