I'm Rachel and I'll be the one blogging here. I'm actually crap at keeping up with these things, but I'm going to try my best. I'm a 30-something mother of an eight month old boy who is currently in love with carrots, peaches, avocados, and peas. He's actually the reason I started putting food up. I'm too cheap to pay for store-bought baby food that doesn't taste like the food its supposed to be. I live in South Jersey and we are overflowing with fresh, tasty produce during the summer. So I started to buy peas, lots and lots of peas. He made them disappear very quickly. Then we moved to carrots and avocados. So I bought 25 lbs of pears. I don't know what came over me. So roasted pears were made for him, but I still had a ton of pears left.
So I canned them. The heirloom tomatoes I had canned seemed fine so I figured I could can pears. And then pickled peppers. Then pickled garlic.
You can see where this is going, can't you?
I succumbed to the lure of pickled food. Mind you I have never liked pickled food. I didn't once think during my pregnancy 'hey, I could really go for a pickle.' In July my husband and I hit a restaurant in Philadelphia called The Farmers Cabinet. We mostly went for the beer, but were very surprised by the delicious fondue and pickled vegetables. I got the taste for it and decided I had to reproduce the pickled jalapenos and juniper tomatoes. I've yet to do the tomatoes and I wasn't 100% happy with the first round of jalapenos but now I can't stop. I want to pickle everything!
I do the majority of my shopping at the Collingswood Farmers Market, interspersed with Wegmans. This weekend I was inspecting kirby pickles because a co-worker of mine had mentioned that he really loved dill pickles; I use them all as tasters so I figured I can pander to them a bit. The farmer saw me and ended up handing over four quarts of kirbys along with a big bunch of dill in exchange for a bottle of pickles for himself and one of his workers. This is why it rocks to go to the farmers. I have another one who will happily give me a case of carrots whenever I ask. No need to pick up a few at time.
But I digress. I used a combo of two recipes for dill pickles - Garlic Dill Pickles from Food in Jars and Tart and Sweet by Kelly Geary and Jessie Knadler - along with a few changes of my own.
This makes 4 quarts
4 cups of vinegar (I used a combo of white and apple cider)
4 cups of water
5 TB of salt
1 TB of sugar
In each jar
3 cloves of garlic*
4 - 5 sprigs of fresh dill
1 TB of mustard seed
1 tsp of black peppercorns
1 hot pepper
Clean the cucumbers and submerge in ice water for ~3 hours. I lost track of time so they were in there for longer. No big deal.
Sterilize jars and lids in hot water canner.
Combine the vinegar, water, salt, and sugar in a saucepan and heat to a simmer, making sure the salt and sugar dissolve completely.
Remove jars from hot water bath and put all of the spices, etc. into the jars. This is where you can experiment. You can play around with the spices and the peppers, but do not change the ratio of vinegar and water.
Pack the cucumbers into the jars as tightly as possible. Pour the hot brine over the pickles and make sure you've gotten the air bubbles out. Place the lids on the jars and finger tighten the rings.
Process in hot water bath for 10 minutes. Immediately remove from water and let cool for 8 - 12 hours undisturbed.
Voila! You have pickles that are ready to be hidden in your pantry for as long as you can wait to eat them. (Hint: not long)
Four quarts hanging out on the counter waiting for the other three to join them. Apparently when you do coins, spears, and halved pickles you have a lot more than the original four quarts. Also, I think he threw in a lot more cukes when my back was turned checking on the baby.
