| I'll just give away the ending first: It was easy. Canning jams and tomato sauce is easy, but making pickles is easier because you don't need to use a canner. You just need jars, lids, and whatever ingredients go in your pickles. I used the Dill Pickle Kosher Style recipe in the Ball's canning recipe book.
I was supposed to start with 8 lbs of 4"-6" long cukes. Well, I didn't weigh 'em. Here's the big pile I brought home:
Just a note about the cukes - you want them FRESH. As in, harvested within the past 24 hours if possible. So if you plan to make pickles, buy or pick your cukes the same day you are making your pickles.
Step two: Put pint or quart sized jars in the oven at 200F. (I used quarts.)
Step three: Start cooking your brine. You need:
1 qt white vinegar (5%)
1 qt distilled or filtered water
3/4 c. sugar
1/2 c. pickling salt
3 tbsp. pickling spices
They recommend putting the pickling spices in a mesh bag, but I didn't have one. What I did have was a tea strainer, so I put the pickling spices directly into the vinegar/water mixture and just strained 'em out at the end. Once you've added all of the ingredients, then simmer them for 15 minutes.
Cheapo white vinegar. Use it in your pickles, and use it for cleaning too. Cheaper, safer, and just as effective as the yucky chemical concoctions sold in the cleaning aisle.
Everything in the pot, simmering.
While simmering the brine, prep your cukes. Cut off the tips (you can leave the stem end on, but I couldn't always tell what was what, so I cut both tips off) and then cut them in half. Sometimes I also experimented with cutting them in quarters. I'm not sure if it was a good idea or not but it didn't seem to hurt.
While the brine simmered, I also located the other items I would need: dill, mustard seed, bay leaves, and garlic. And I peeled the garlic.
Sliced and washed cukes, peeled cloves of garlic, and (in the back) a container of mustard seeds.
After 15 minutes of simmering, you should have hot brine, hot jars, and prepped cukes and other ingredients. So now you assemble everything together.
Take a jar from the oven and put in 1 clove garlic, 1 bay leaf, 1/2 tsp mustard seeds, and a big bunch of dill. The recipe said "one head" of dill, but my dill didn't come in heads. I think you're supposed to use fully grown dill plants that have bolted and flowered. I just used a whole lot of dill per jar. Last, stuff in your cukes.
As I was doing this, I found that the first cukes would go in and then fall into positions that made it hard for me to get more cucumbers in there. On my last jar I tried a new idea: I tipped the jar on its side and then laid the cucumber slices flat in the jars. That worked well. Another lesson I learned: USE STRAIGHT CUCUMBERS, not curvy ones.
Once a jar is full of cukes, dill, mustard seed, garlic, and a bay leaf, add the brine. I had a nice funnel to use for this, and I ladled the brine through a tea strainer to get all of the pickling spices out. Fill each jar so there is 1/4" headspace at the top, and then put the 2-piece lid on.
The recipe was supposed to make 3 quarts, but after filling up 3 quarts, I had a bunch of brine and cucumbers leftover. So I filled up a 4th quart. And I even had a few cucumbers left (about 5 or so I think).
Now leave your jars alone for 6 weeks (or more). I checked a calendar for the date six weeks from today and then marked each jar of pickles "Kosher Dills 11-7-10" so I'll know when I can eat them.
My pickles-to-be
Some of the leftover cucumbers
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