One of our first harvests from our garden this 2018 garden season has come from our cucumber plants. We will admit that these were hidden under large and abundant leaves and grew a little bigger than would be ideal for pickles but we were so pleased with how visually appealing they looked stacked in a wide mouth mason jar. We harvested 8 large cucumbers and canned them as dill pickles.
We used the dill pickle recipe from the Ball Blue Book, however, made our own pickling spice as we did not have this on hand. This process was surprisingly simple, we sliced our cucumbers using a mandolin and then soaked them in water to prevent discoloration or alteration. We then prepared our brine with the only alteration to the recipe being that we used part apple cider vinegar in addition to white vinegar and that the pickling spice was supposed to be added to the brine in a spice bag but was instead dropped into the brine loose. We then prepared our jars by packing our cucumbers into clean jars, sprinkling some dried dill in each jar, pouring the hot brine into the jars and left a ¼ of an inch headspace. We then processed them in a water bath canner for 15 minutes. This resulted in 9 pints of dill pickle chips. Now we must patiently wait 4-6 weeks for these pickles to cure and develop satisfactory flavor.
We’d love to hear about your garden and what you are harvesting this season! We’ll be back soon with another recipe or update regarding our garden or our journey to becoming more self-reliant. Thank you for stopping by and visiting Sunup to Sundown!
