Monday, September 12, 2016

Canning Cucumbers



 HOT DAMN Pickles!
AKA
Mondo's Hot & Spicy

My modifications to the recipe were due to me being terrified of how hot these are going to be.
I omitted the peppercorns since I was using 2-3 birds eye chili peppers per jar.
For those that don't know Birds Eye Chili's rate on average 70,000 on the heat scale.
Standard Jalapeno's are between 10,000-15,000.
Due to changing up the heat ratio I also changed the name of mine to Hot Damn Pickles!


These were seriously the prettiest pickles I've canned!
I used fresh picked cucumbers & my home grown garlic & dill for the recipe!
Using Dill seeds instead of dill weed since most of my dill had already died off. Next year I will harvest my dill and cucumbers together using the first batch of ready cucumbers instead of the last batch for this recipe!
In one day I managed 15 quarts and 1 pint of Garlic Dill pickles!
The one pint was ONE entire cucumber!
It was too pretty to split up and quite a challenge to fit into the jar but I made it!



Next time I make these I'm going to cut the onions in half!
Seriously that's a LOT of onions per jar & per pickle ratio!


Sweet Pickles

THESE are the BEST pickles EVER!!!
They take 7 days.
Not kidding 7 days of water treatments to do them correctly.
This is what sold me on canning pickles forever!!!
I can't share my recipe as I got it from a very old, "The New Pillsbury Family Cookbook".
Pretty sure you can find a copy at most any used book store for a few dollars.
I did cut the sugar amount down from 8 cups to 5 cups.
Two years ago they were amazing but too sweet.
I've already tried some and even with the lower sugar amount they are divine!
I have one more batch soaking now (day 4) when they are done so are my pickle days for this year!



This link takes you first to my blog on pickle relish which has a link to the recipe.

Now on my previous post about pickle relish I mentioned that a massive ton of my pickles were turning yellow and orange.
I looked it up - anything from watering, not enough fertilizer, to them being on the vine too long can cause the color to change.
The sites were really ridiculous about how once the color changed they were worthless and bitter.

We tasted ours and they were still perfectly amazing.
Sweet, crunchy and crisp.
No weirdness just yellow.
Also they smelled amazing when cut!

My advice to you - check your product before you toss.
If it looks good, smells good and tastes good - its good.

1 comment:

  1. I'm not much into pickled stuff .. I know I'm missing out (so my friends tell me ..lol) but you are such an inspiration for living off the earth .... you need to do a recipe book ... can't wait to see what you share next .. Celia M. - HighHeeledLife.com

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