Pickling up some cucumbers and beans from the garden.
We found some mini cucumbers at the store and decided to can some pickles to enjoy at our first bbq of the summer (which I hope looks nothing like this ‘spring’ we’re currently 'enjoying’).
These pickles are spicy and super vinegary - definitely our favorite concoction from last year. It’s a riff off of the Dill Pickle recipe from Saving the Season.
Ingredients
- 8-10 small pickling cucumbers (3 lbs)
- 2 ¼ cups white vinegar
- 1 ¾ cups water
- 2 tbs pickling salt
- 4 sprigs of dill
- 2 tsp of mustard seed
- 1 tsp coriander seed
- 4 cloves of garlic
- 3 hot peppers (dry or fresh)
Method
- cut a thin slice off the ends of each cucumber
- combine vinegar, water, and salt and bring to a boil
- pack cucumbers and herbs into sterilized jars
- pour boiling vinegar mixture over top with ½ “ head space
- process for 10 minutes for pint jars, 15 for quart.
We braved this morning’s rain storm and headed out to St. Norbert Farmers’ Market to grab some goodies for our Saturday afternoon pickling party of two.
We went off a couple recipes out of the ‘Saving the Seasons’ recipe book that I borrowed from Ron. The ’Saving the Seasons’ and ’Simply in Season’ cook books are the best. Definitely worth checking out if you haven't already.
(…and Ron, if you’re reading this…I’m sorry, I accidentally spilt orange juice on page 85. At first I wasn’t going to tell you, but then I figured that any mishaps on the dill pickle page was a dead giveaway anyhow.)
This afternoon’s canning adventure yielded two jars of spicy pickled yellow and green beans, two jars of dill pickled yellow and green beans, two jars of deli sliced dill pickles, and one jar of zesty dill pickles.
Using sea salt instead of pickling salt in your canning recipes.
/A few people have asked me about swapping out pickling salt with sea salt. I’m no expert canner, but I do consider myself a search engine wizard, so here’s the low down from the internets.
Fine grain pure (no additives) sea salt can be used instead of pickling salt. Some people say it has a slightly different taste and some say there is no difference. The main thing that I noted was if you use coarse grain sea salt you should add a little more then the recipe calls for to compensate for the difference in grain size.
Chrysti (http://chrystidoeslife.tumblr.com) shared that if you use regular sea salt you might notice some discolouration in your canned veggies. I also read that it can make your brine cloudy.
We pickled our hungarian hot wax banana peppers!
We used this recipe - http://littlehouseinthesuburbs.com/2008/10/pickled-hungarian-wax-peppers.html - but swapped the pickling salt with sea salt and the mustard seeds with dill. We also through a few cayennes in because our banana peppers were definitely lacking in spice this year (bummer)…(that’s right I’m bringing back ‘bummer’).