Canning Pickles

Another great day for canning and this time I made pickles. My cucumber plants are dry already so I bought 13 cucumbers at the farmer’s market for $4.00. This amount made seven jars of pickles so it was well worth it, especially taking into consideration that these are chemical-free, local cucumbers and there won’t be any sugar or preservatives in the them. Vlasic Stackers Kosher Dills include calcium chloride, sodium benzoate (preservatives), polysorbate 80 (an emulsifier and allergen), and yellow 5 (allergen and link to ADHD and cancer^[1]).

I like to cut my cucumbers into sandwich slices, but you can cut them however you like or leave them whole. If you’re using pint jars, it’s easier to arrange them if they are cut. I used a simple ratio of water, vinegar, and pickling salt depending on how much you want to make: 1 cup of water, per 1 cup of vinegar, per 1 Tablespoon of pickling salt, which seemed like too much salt to me. Afterward I was reading this article where salt-savvy Chef Bearman of a leading health-forward fine dining restaurant in New York said that, “Vinegar is one of those foods that sometimes people mistake for salt. Most of the time, pickles are made by adding salt to the cucumbers and letting them ferment. That fermentation process brings out acid, so the pickle ends up tasting acidic. It also ends up being incredibly salty. We actually did a lot of our pickles without salt and just vinegar with a small ratio of sugar.”^[2] Next time I would definitely cut the salt to teaspoons instead of tablespoons, so I altered my recipe (still use some salt and no sugar) and if you make more jars and run out of the vinegar water, use this ratio to make extra.

Here are pictures of the sliced cucumbers in the jars before adding other ingredients, and a close-up showing the garlic and dill in the finished jar.

Pickles
~12 (3 lbs) pickling (small) cucumbers
4 C water
4 C white vinegar
4 t pickling salt
7 bunches of dill gone to seed
7 cloves of garlic
7 pint jars
Wash cucumbers and cut off each end. Slice cucumbers the way you prefer. Bring the water, vinegar, and pickling salt to a boil. Meanwhile pack cucumbers loosely into hot, sterilized pint canning jars, leaving a ½” open at the top. Add one bunch of dill seeds and one clove of garlic to each jar. Pour hot vinegar mixture over cucumbers leaving 1/2” open at the top. Dry jar rims and put on lids. Process jars for 10 minutes with jars submerged in boiling-water. Remove jars, cool, and remove rings. Let rest 2 weeks to meld flavors.