The September 2010 Daring Cooks’ challenge was hosted by John of Eat4Fun. John chose to challenge The Daring Cooks to learn about food preservation, mainly in the form of canning and freezing. He challenged everyone to make a recipe and preserve it. John’s source for food preservation information was from The National Center for Home Food Preservation.
This month has been crazy busy for me! John challenged us to make an apple butter, which I promise! I’ll make in the upcoming weeks as I usually can a big batch of it every year. But between the blog, the multiple conferences, the Kelloggs breakfast (which is happening this morning!), school starting back up, and so much more, I just didn’t get to it in time for today’s post. What I was able to accomplish, however, was canning a few buckets of homemade pickles about 4 weeks back with Alex, my four year old, who just happens to be completely addicted to the salty treats. And, seeing as though they need to sit for about 4 to 6 weeks before eating them in order to reach their full “picklability”, the timing turned out to be perfect for this challenge.
Just a note, that if you’re new to canning, you should definitely read up a bit on canning safety and ways to be sure your food is properly preserved. The book that I use and love is Preserving the Harvest. There is, of course, a wealth of knowledge on the internet as well. Finally Daring Cooks provided it’s cooks with a very informative PDF on canning to help us along with the challenge. Feel free to check it out.
Oke Doke, let’s whip up a batch of pickles!
Ingredients Needed:
20 Pickling Cucumbers
4 Cups of Water
11/2 Cups of Cider Vinegar
1/2 Pkg of Pickling Spices
6 Cloves of Garlic
3-4 Good Sized Sprigs of Dill
Fill up a large bowl with ice water and soak the cucumbers for 2 hours making sure to keep the water iced. And just a quick tip… to ensure that your pickles are nice and crispy, 24 hours before putting the recipe together, allow them to sit with a hearty covering of salt. This will help to dry out the pickles and allow them to stay crispier once they’re placed in the vinegar solution.
While the pickles are icing, go ahead and sterilize your jars. I chose to sterilize mine by boiling them in a water bath for about 15 minutes.
Now grab a large pot and add in your water, cider vinegar and 1/2 your package of pickling spices. Let it boil until the spices are fully incorporated. Remove it from the heat.
Grab your sterilized container and drop a couple cloves of garlic and a sprig of dill into each.
Now add in your cucumbers. Sticking as many as you can fit into the jar.
Finally, pour the pickling juice over the cucumbers being sure to cover them completely. Close up the jar tight.
Now, grab the pot you sterilized your jars in and fill it back up with water. Bring it to a boil and then add in your sealed jars and let them boil for a good 15 minutes making sure to have at least 2″ of water above the top of the jar.
Your jar tops should suck in within 24 hours of removing them from the water. Store them in your cupboard for 4 to 6 weeks. We’re on week 4 right now and plan on letting the others sit for a week or two more, but we pulled one jar of them out just for this occasion. Here’s our jar at 4 weeks.
And here’s Alex giving a “Chew chew, two thumbs up” to our homemade pickle endeavor!
I’m adding this post to A Crafty Soiree over at Katie’s Nesting Spot.
Thanks again John for another great Daring Cook’s Challenge!
Dill Pickles
Ingredients:
20 Pickling Cucumbers
4 Cups of Water
11/2 Cups of Cider Vinegar
1/2 Pkg of Pickling Spices
6 Cloves of Garlic
3-4 Good Sized Sprigs of Dill
Directions:
Fill up a large bowl with ice water and soak the cucumbers for 2 hours making sure to keep the water iced.
While the pickles are icing, go ahead and sterilize your jars. I chose to sterilize mine by boiling them in a water bath for about 15 minutes.
Now grab a large pot and add in your water, cider vinegar and 1/2 your package of pickling spices. Let it boil until the spices are fully incorporated. Remove it from the heat.
Grab your sterilized container and drop a couple cloves of garlic and a sprig of dill into each. Now add in your cucumbers. Sticking as many as you can fit into the jar.Finally, pour the pickling juice over the cucumbers being sure to cover them completely. Close up the jar tight.
Now, grab the pot you sterilized your jars in and fill it back up with water. Bring it to a boil and then add in your sealed jars and let them boil for a good 15 minutes making sure to have at least 2″ of water above the top of the jar.
Your jar tops should suck in within 24 hours of removing them from the water. Store them in your cupboard for 4 to 6 weeks.
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They look crunchy and awesome, Julie! Way to go!
I think pickled cucumbers, gerhkins, are my fave or all things you can pickle. I really do need to have a go at making them myself.
yay, i’m so glad they turned out well! Way to go on making pickles – I find that very impressive 🙂
I never knew how to make pickles. I’ve always wondered but been too lazy to look up the process.
Also, your son does look a lot like my friend KC’s son. I think you’ve mentioned it before on my blog.
Thanks for the pictures and tutorial. They look delicious!
I always buy them from the S/M. Thanks for sharing the technique. I am sure they were very crunchy and tasty. I will bookmark this.
Wow! That looks so simple or did you make that look so? Pickling n all huh! I’m imperessed 🙂
You are way more adventurous than I am! Canning and preserving is one kitchen task I have yet to tackle. But if you can teach me to make a sour pickle like they serve only in Jewish delis in New York City, I’ll give a whirl!
Dianna replied: — January 27th, 2011 @ 8:48 am
I have to agree with this poster….I love sour dill pickles! If you know of a good recipe you could share…..
When I was a kid my mom canned pickles. We had so many cucumbers, there must have been 40-50 glass ball jars full of pickles. Those things lasted for years and years. I don’t think I could try a homemade pickle ever again!
Julie,
Your pickles look delicious! And don’t you just love being able to pull them out of the fridge and tell people that you pickled them yourself? I sure would! And I loved that picture of Alex crunching into his pickle. So cute! Thank you for sharing!
Awesome Julie. Love preserving & pickling recipes. They do look good if Alex’s face is our measuring stick.
wow thats so cool you went to a food blogging conference looks great your little guy is adorable email me about meeting sometime Rebecca
rebeccasubbiah at yahoo dot com
The only thing better than beans is pickles!
Very cool! One day I need to take this challenge on as well!
My mouth is salivating! I love pickles, thanks for the tips1
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Canning is scary to me. It’s my next step. Thanks for sharing.
Homemade dill pickles! I love ’em but never thought to make my own. I like ’em really tangy.
~ingrid
I am so excited…I am jumping up and down.I love canning and I love pickles…but I have never tried to make my own. I want to do this so badly.
Your comment on Thursday post was so darn sweet. Thank you, Thank you. It mans a lot. (Your email address is not popping up with your comments anymore – maybe it never did, but I thought it did…OK, it is late…good night!).
I just loved pickles…and pickles anything else for that matter! These look PERFECT and I love your little taste-tester! Too cute!
I’ve not been receiving your feed updates for some reason!?! I’ll resubscribe!
Thank you so much for sharing this! My husband has been bugging me to make pickles all summer long. I have always been a bit hesitant because of the whole canning process…but you made it look easy! Now if I can wait 6 weeks for them to be ready? That’s another story! 🙂
We are pickle fiends around here, especially for dills, but have never made our own. You make it look easy and we just did our first “canning” project. I put the quotes because it’s kinda a cheater version, we made no cook freezer jam for the first time. I felt very domesticated and successful. Maybe I’ll be ready for a more ambitious project like making pickles by next year. Thank you for joining us at A Crafty Soiree! I hope you’ll come back next week and link up again!
Yum! I’ve never canned my own pickles but would love to. And if I get that reaction from Little Butt I’m all in! Thanks for sharing!