Bountiful Baskets had pickling cucumbers last week. Their website said 34 pounds for $17.50, which seemed like a decent deal to me. I’ve wanted to make pickles for a while. But the little cucumbers are too expensive in the grocery store.
I got my case and brought it home. Even the crate it came in was cool.
And, I found out after getting it home, it was 50 pounds, not 34. An even better deal.
I used the recipe from Pick Your Own which is one of my favorite websites for canning.
Dess wanted to help me with pickling. We started by washing each pickle, and quartering them into spears.
The spears were soaked overnight in a bucket full of salt water. The next day, I removed and rinsed the spears. I put any combination of the following in my quart jars: Dill, peppercorns, whole mustard seed, crushed garlic cloves, dried hot peppers, and/or red chili flake. I mixed up the seasoning so we’d have some dill-ier, some garlicky, some spicy, and some flat-out hot.
We also used a mandolin to slice some cucumbers into chips. These were not brined. They were just sliced and placed in jars.
The hot vinegar brine was poured over the cucumbers, and lids were placed on the jars.
Off to the water bath they go. Since the brine has such a high acidity, you can use a water bath or a pressure canner. I chose water bath, even though I used my pressure cooker to do so.
After 20 minutes per batch, I had pickles. Unfortunately, you should wait 2 weeks, or 4 for really good flavor. So now, I have 34 jars of pickles, I can’t even try them yet!
Each jar was labeled when cool, and placed in our pantry. I’ll post an after report in 4 weeks when we finally get to open them.
Mason Jars and Mixing Bowls 