Monday, August 15, 2011

I make pickles, and you can too!




Who would have ever thought me and ol' Aunt Bee would have something in common.  Bad pickles.  Well we don't know that for sure just yet.  My first attempt may come out a blue ribbon winner.  At least that's what I am hoping for.  It does remain to be seen.  I will warn you now, this is my longest blog post to date.  I tried to fill it with as much info as I could to help you along.   I've included numerous pictures as well.  If you are new to my blog you can click on a picture for a larger view.

 Every morning I go out to the garden to pull a few weeds and get my watering done before the heat sets in too awful bad.  As I mentioned before, the only edible crop that seems to be thriving in my awful soil and the oppressive TX heat has been my cucumbers. Now don't get me wrong, we like cucumbers. We use them in salads, eat them chilled and soaked in water and vinegar.  As with anything else though too much of a good thing is still, too much. So I have been wondering what I was going to do with all of the extras I was going to end up with. Intially my plan was to hand some out to the neighbors. Hopefully I am still going to be able to do that but a couple of days ago it hit me. Pickles.

Now I can remember watching that episode of Andy Griffin as a kid and thinking that making pickles must be a long process, and you must have to have just the right spices to produce a good tasting batch. Aunt Bee was a smart gal, and to have her pickles taste like kerosene, then there must be something in the process she was goofing up. As near as I can rememeber I've never had a home canned pickle. My mother may correct me on that, but for the life of me I don't ever remember eating a pickle that wasn't store bought.

So I began to research pickling. Starting with my two favorite books. The first is The Backyard Homestead. A must have reference for anyone that wants to produce their own food. I wasn't too impressed with the actual pickle recipe that was in the book. The process was the old fashioned way, including 6 weeks of salt brining. No good.

So I referenced my second favorite book that my sister got me for my last birthday. Self Sufficiency for the 21st Century. This book is also a must have for anyone with self sustainment in mind. Everything from building your own composting toilet to root cellaring your sweet potatoes.  But neither book covered making pickles. They both covered pickling well enough but it just wasn't what I was looking for specifically. So it was off to the interwebs!

I finally settled on a recipe and a method I thought I could handle. And so began my journey into canning things that actually came from my garden. Which I have never attempted before. Knowing some of the basics I knew I would need a canner, and some jars and lids. None of which I had on hand. Off to the store we go. I had a specific canner in mind that I remember my Great Grandma in Onaga KS had and used. I know I had seen them before in passing so I knew they were still out there. I hit the jackpot on the first stop. Wally-world. As much as I truly hate that place, they do carry everything.

Here's my new gear.


I picked up a Canner, 12 Qt sized jars and lids, an extra box of lids(the lids aren't reusable and considering this was my first attempt I figured I had better have a couple extras for screw ups.) I also grabbed a box of canning tools including a jar grabber, a magnet for snagging the lids out of the boiling water and a air bubble dispenser that also seconds as a gauge for headspace in the jar. Now you can run out to Wally-world yourself to grab all this stuff. Or you can pick them up right here, right now.

Columbian Home 0707-1 Granite Ware 21-1/2-Quart Steel/Porcelain Water-Bath Canner with Rack

Now for the jars I bought regular mouth Qt jars. Which I list for you here. There are also wide mouth jars for tomatoes or sauces. Just make sure you note what you are getting so you can get lids to match.

Ball Regular Mason Canning Jar 1 Qt., Case of 12


Here is a nice canning tool kit that includes all the tools I got today.

Fagor Home Canning Kit

The last thing I picked up was this bag of pickling salt.

Pickling And Canning Salt By Precision Foods Inc

So just just to make sure we are all on the same sheet of music here, the list of the minimum equipment needed.

A Canner - The big pot - You don't specifically have to have the canner pot but whatever you are using cannot be aluminum and has to be big enough to fully submerge your jars.

Jars and lids - Make sure the lids match the mouth of your jars. Quart or Pint depending on how many pickles you are making and how big you want them.

Some sort of tongs to get the boiling hot jars out of the canner.


Equipment that makes things easier.

Funnel for the jars - makes for easier pouring of the pickling solution.

A flat spatula - gets all the air bubbles out prior to sealing


Now for the recipe.

Ingredients

4 full grown cucumbers

6 cups of white distilled vinegar(5% acidity)

6 cups of water(tap is fine)

6 Tblsp of pickling salt(or kosher, not iodized table salt)

3 heads of fresh dill or 3 tsp of dill seed(one for each Qt jar)

3 cloves of garlic(same as above)

Method

Now for the fun part. I will be including a "Things I learned" during some of these instructions. So watch for them.

Take your canning pot and fill with water. Put the cans and lids in the water and bring to a boil. The canner I got was a 21 Qt pot. Thats ALOT of water. It never seemed to reach a what I would call a rolling boil while I was sanitizing my jars.

*THINGS I LEARNED*
Put the lid on the pot. It traps the heat in and brings the water to a a full boil. Unfortunately I didn't learn this until I had to re-process a jar(more on that later)


When your canner is getting close to boiling start your brine. In a large saucepan combine the vinegar, water, and salt and bring to a boil.

*THINGS I LEARNED*
Make sure the canner is on the verge of boiling. I had my brine to the boiling point long before my jars where ready so I had to lower the heat and wait till the jars were ready and then bring the brine back to a boil prior to filling the jars. There is no time limit on sanitizing the jars. Because we are using the hot bath method, as soon as the canner reaches the boiling point you can pull the jars out and fill them.


While you are waiting for the canner to boil you can get your cucumbers, dill, and garlic ready to go.


During my research I read that taking the ends off of the cucumbers helps to make the pickles more crisp. I'm not sure why, but they sounded like they knew what they were talking about so I did it.

Once you have the cucumbers sliced and diced the way you want them and both pots are boiling it's time to fill the jars.

Very carefully remove a jar from the canner and put a clove of garlic and a head of dill in it.


Then begin to pack your cucumbers in. If you cut them too long for the jar just clip a bit off the end. I saved all of my clipped ends and stuffed them into my last jar that didn't have enough spears to fill it up. Make sure you really pack the spears in tightly. It helps to keep them down and not float up in the brine.




Now if you have a funnel, insert it into jar and pour just enough boiling brine to fill the jar 1/2in below the lip. This is called the headspace of the jar and is very important. The proper headspace allows for a good seal and keeps the cucumbers off the lid. Using your air removal tool(flat spatula, bamboo skewer, butter knife) remove all of the air bubbles out of the jar. If your headspace lowers after this process just add a little more brine until the 1/2in is achieved again.





Take a damp cloth or paper towel and wipe the lip of the jar where the lid will sit to clean it. Pull a lid out of the canner(which is still boiling) and place on jar. Put the ring on and tighten down.

*THINGS I LEARNED*
Less is definitely more when tightening lids. I over tightened on the first round and didn't get a good seal and had to re-process a jar. During the second tightening I used the three finger method. Which was actually two fingers and thumb...but that's an argument for another day. The point being, no tighter than you can get with three fingers.

Once all the jars are filled with the lids on and tightened its time for the hot bath.   Here's my last jar.  Notice the clipped ends and the color of the cucumbers.




After reviewing a couple canning websites I found that the time for the hot bath differed between them. A few I saw said to keep the filled jars in the canner for up to 30 min. A majority of the sites though had the time between 10 and 15 min. So I took the middle. 12 min sounded good to me so that's what I went with. Again use the lid of the canner and watch for over boiling. That lid on method really gets that water hot!

After 12 min has passed it's time to pull out the jars. Carefully remove the jars from the canner and gently set on a dish towel. You may here a hissing sound coming from the lid. This is what you want, but don't worry if they aren't. It's not a requirement for a good seal. Cover the jars with another towel and allow to slowly cool.

Check the lids in about an hour. If you can see it, the lid should be concave a little, and you should not feel any give when you push down on it. Careful the lids are still going to be hot. If the lid has give or if it makes a popping noise as it goes up and down then the jar has not sealed. Wait another 30 min to an hour and check again. If the jar hasn't sealed at this point, there is two options. Re-process the jar or, put it in the fridge and enjoy the pickles within the next 30 days. If you get a good seal the pickles will keep in a cool dark place for about a year.

*THINGS I LEARNED*
Wait that second hour for the jar to seal. One of my jars sealed within the first 20 min during the cooling period. After an hour the other 2 had not. I thought I had over tightened the lids. I decided to try something out. I was going to re-process one of the jars and just consume the other jar within the month. It would give me a good test bed for taste and crispness having the two to compare against each other. I pulled the lid off of one and brought the canner back to boiling with a new lid in to get sterilized and heated up. With the new lid in place and three fingered tightened, the jar was re-processed. Another 12 min in the canner, then pulled out to be cooled. During this process I rechecked the other jar, only to find that it had sealed itself during that second hour. Once again my impatience had got the better of me. Oh well, I can now still compare the two and see how reprocessing will affect the first jar.

Here are my jars cooling off. Notice the color change to a more "pickle color". I was really surprised by this. I thought that color change would only come with the six week salt brining method. I was wrong.




The whole hot water bath can be done away with if you plan on consuming the entire jar within 30 days. Simply add the cucumbers, dill, and garlic to any jar, pour boiling brine over it, cover, and let it cool down to room temperature. Then put your pickles in the fridge and eat within a month.

So there you have it. Pickles in an afternoon, including a shopping trip. Once again I am amazed at the simplicity of producing something that I would have normally just picked up from the store more than likely filled with numerous, unpronounceable preservatives.  So do me and Aunt Bee really have bad pickles in common?  We don't know yet.  The pickles can be consumed 24 hours after being jarred.  The recommended time is 2 weeks to allow the brine to fully soak into the cucumbers.  I am going on the road next week so I will be doing a taste test next Sunday when I return.  You may want to wait to try this recipe until then.  If they turn out to taste like they were pickled in kerosene, then I will have saved you a few cucumbers and an afternoon of canning.  If they do turn out to be a bad batch maybe the Mrs. and the kids will be just like Andy and Barney, learning to love them to spare my feelings.  For some reason, I seriously doubt that though. =)

If you liked the post or found it to be informative don't forget to like it on Facebook.  There is a Facebook button at the bottom of the post or one at the top off to the right.  If you want to wait to see how they turned out, I don't blame you.


Y'all keep it straight out there.

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