In a pickle

I had produce!  I successfully grew a bumper crop of green beans and a fair number of cucumbers this summer.  Now, when I was a kid, my mom would take all the cucumbers from my dad's garden (he had more than 1 plant, so there was a plethora of cucumbers), borrow a giant enameled pot from our neighbor, and make pickles.  She'd make two kinds: bread and butter, which I think no one but her ate, and dill.  I, being a ungrateful, but probably typical child, didn't ever like her dill pickles either.  First, they didn't taste like the ones from the store.  Secondly, they were in quarters.  I never liked quartered pickles.  Guess what?  I grew up.  I learned that things that don't taste like the pre-packaged variety are not bad; they're often quite good.  Alas, I learned too late.  We moved, my dad doesn't (can't?) grow cucumbers anymore, and we no longer have a neighbor with a pot for us to borrow for processing.  But I learned about canning from some wonderful folks at church last fall, and after my venture into confit (see previous blogs ____ and _____), I was able to get a canning pot (just like one we borrowed!) and some jar tongs from my in-laws.  At the time, I just thought it would make sterilizing jars easier.  But faced with my own garden produce and all those circumstances, there was one thing to do: pickle.





Garlic Dill Pickles--Cucumber and Green Bean
This recipe is taken from another website, and slightly modified.
Cucumbers
Green Beans
1 1/2 C cider vinegar
1 1/2 C water
2 Tbsp kosher salt
8 cloves garlic, peeled
4 tsp dill seeds
2 tsp black peppercorns
1 tsp crushed red pepper flakes

Wash two quart jars in hot water.  Let them air dry.  Sterilize the lids in a small pot of gently simmering water.  Begin bringing a canning bath to a boil.

Rinse and chop the cucumbers.  I cut them into quarters/wedges.  Pack them into one of the clean jars along with half the garlic, dill, peppercorns, and pepper flakes.  Rinse the green beans and trim off the ends, and pack them into the other jar with the other half of the spices.  Don't crush your veggies while you're packing!

In another smallish pot, combine the vinegar, water, and salt to make pickling brine.  Bring it to a boil, then carefully pour it into each of the jars.  Leave some space between the things you've put in the jar and the rim-- about 1/4 inch minimum.  (I only filled to the base of the rim.)

Wipe the jar rims, and put one of your nice, clean, sterilized lids on top.  Gently screw on the rim to "fingertip tight"-ness.  I take this literally, perhaps sillily, and use only my thumb and forefinger of each hand to hold the jar and twist the rim.

Hopefully by now your canning bath is at a boil.  Gently lower your jars into the bath, and make sure the water level is over the tops of the jars.  Once the water comes back to a boil, start a timer for ten minutes.

After ten minutes, remove the jars from the water and allow them to cool on the counter overnight.  Other recipes I've seen recommend not touching them while they cool, because that can mess up the seal formation.  If the jars do not seal (the lids will pop in when they do), refrigerate the pickles.  Wait at least a week for them to mature before you start noshing.

The cucumbers turned out well.  I didn't use a specific pickling cucumber-- I used the ones in my garden, and I don't remember what variety they may have been.  They were larger than pickles usually are.  The texture might have been influenced by that.  They're not quite normally textured, but they're not bad.  Similarly, the flavor is different than either my husband and I had had before.  We agreed they're yummy, just different.  I found the flavor really grew on me.  We discovered the spiciness of the crushed pepper flakes didn't distribute throughout the jar.  We had some awesomely hot pickles, and some milder ones.

Obviously, this was a cucumber pickle recipe.  The green beans I made turned out shrivel-y, but that's an aesthetic thing.  The bigger concern is that it is not recommended to can green beans without a pressure canner, because you can't be sure you're killing all the bacteria.  I kept them in the fridge, and watch them for signs of bacterial growth (the lid popping back up) to make sure I wasn't going to poison myself or my husband.

Finally, this recipe was a good start.  I wanted to venture into pickling, and now I have.  I liked that it is a small-batch recipe, which was great for someone who doesn't necessarily know what they're doing or how it will turn out.