So I’ve been making pickles for a while now – mostly fermented dill pickles, which Mom doesn’t care for. I tried making “Bread ‘N’ Butter” pickles, which are not fermented, and for a while she seemed to like them, but eventually she decided they were too sweet. They weren't the pickles she had grown up with, made by her mother!
Now I have to agree with Mom about the Bread ‘N’ Butter pickles - they are much too sweet; but honestly, while I loved my Grandma, I was not all that fond of her pickles either. I always favored dill pickles, while my Mom could probably live the rest of her life without regret, never tasting, smelling, or seeing a dill pickle; but she's my Mom, and I feel a certain amount of obligation toward making her happy.
For my first effort, I tried for a fermented deli-style pickle (without dill), but ended up with something neither Mom nor I cared for! After putting that disaster behind us, I decided to try following a little closer in Grandma's footsteps: I made pickled the cucumbers using a vinegar brine instead of fermenting them. Here's what I did:
Suggested Equipment:
- Boiling Water Bath canner or other suitable vessel, complete with canning rack
- Canning jars, pints(12) or quarts (6), complete with rings and new seals
- Sauce pan, 4 to 5 quart
- Canning tools (lifting tongs, headspace guage, etc.)
- Miscellaneous kitchen measures and tools
Ingredients:
| Item | Amount | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Cucumber | Pickling variety | 8 | lb |
| Vinegar | Any 5% acid | 5 | cup |
| Sugar | Brown, packed | ½ | cup |
| Spice mix | Pickling, commercial1 or home-mixed | 4 | Tbs |
| Water | 6 | cup | |
Directions:
Wash each cucumber under running water, and using a vegetable peeler, remove about ⅟₁₆" of both the blossom end and the stem end. Slice the cucumbers lengthwise, making spears. Trim spears to length as needed to preserve ½” headspace in the pint jars (1" in quarts), when the spears stand vertically.
Prepare jars, lids, and canner. Fill the canner with empty jars (no lids), then fill both the jars and the canner with hot tap water (this is to reduce the time needed to bring the temperature of the jars up to boiling) to a depth of at least 1 inch over the top of the jars. Apply heat to bring the entire assembly to a boil, and hold at a simmer for the duration of the fill procedure.
While the jars are heating up, combine water, vinegar, pickling spice mix, and brown sugar in the saucepan, and bring this brine to a boil over medium-high heat. Stir as needed to dissolve the sugar. Hold at a simmer.
Remove the hot jars, one at a time, from the canner, and drain. Pack cucumbers vertically into the hot jar, leaving the required headspace. Ladle hot brine into the jar, covering the pickles again leaving the required headspace. Remove any trapped air.
Install a seal and ring on the jar, per the manufacturer’s directions and return the jar to the canner. In the canner, the jar should still be covered completely with near-boiling water. When all the jars have been filled and returned to the canner, cover the canner and bring it to a boil. Process according to USDA guidelines for your local altitude. For pints at my location this is 15 minutes.
When the required processing time has been achieved, remove the canner from heat, and remove the hot jars from the canner. Let the jars stand for 12 to 24 hours, then check the seals. If any seals have failed to set, reprocess with new seals, or hold the jars with failed seals in the refrigerator for near-term consumption, or discard.
In order to get the full effect of the pickling process, you need to keep the newly-canned jars of pickles in a cool (not cold!) dry place for up to four weeks. Truly, it takes that long for the pickling brine to completely do its work. You can get a perfectly satisfactory marinated cucumber in less time, but the acid will not have had time to finish the pickling process. To add visual interest to the jar, you can occasionally alternate the cucumber spears with narrow strips ( ¼” to ⅜” wide) of other items; perhaps yellow squash, or various colors of Bell pepper. Be careful, however, to select only those items which have processing times that are compatible with pickling cucumbers. I didn't try any, because at the time I was only interested in making the pickle taste right.
I've tried out the product, as a always do for my recipés, and it does taste like what I remember of Grandma's pickles. My Mom also tried them out and agrees with me. They will never be my favorite pickle, but I find them acceptable as something to have on the side of a meal, perhaps a sandwich or bowl of soup. Perhaps it's just because I'm older now, and maybe my tastes have changed, but I don't find these pickles as un-interesting as they were when I was a kid.
No comments:
Post a Comment