2 DIY pickles

As you may or may not already know, I'm secretly domestic in an "I rock out to The Cramps while I cook food I dumpstered" kind of way and try hard to be the closest thing I could be to a homesteader, you know, only living in an apartment. So, to learn one of the oldest and most preserved (literally) food skills, I got some boil canning equipment from my grandparents barn and Dan and I made pickles a couple weeks ago. The recipe
-1/3rd cup picking spice
-1 1/2 liters vinegar
-2 liters water
-5-6 pds FIRM pickling cukes
-1/2 cup sugar
-1/3rd or 2/3rd cups PICKLING salt. Not regular salt.

1) Soak yer cut up pickles in a bath of ice and cold water for 2hrs-24hrs, being sure to keep the bath cold.


2) Sterilize, lest you like botulism. Put the lids and bands in a small pot and simmer them for 10 minutes (YOU CANNOT REUSE LIDS, ONLY BANDS). We sterilized the ball jars (don't use mayo/old pasta sauce/etc jars, they don't seal properly when reused. Use ball or knox) by boiling them in the canner rack for about 20 minutes. Water should go 1/2 inch over the top of the jar. Be careful when taking out the rack and draining the jars because the jars are filled with scalding water.



3) Brine. While this is going on, make yer brine. We mixed the water, salt, vinegar, spice, and sugar. Let it simmer for about 20 minutes. The vinegar burns your throat and nose so put a fan on if you have one.


4) Jar. Put the pickles in the jar, cram them in as tight as you can. It helps if you keep the jars in the rack. Ladle in the brine leaving 1/4th inch of headroom. Sprinkle in some spice if you'd like. Then take a knife and slide it up and down the sides of the jars to remove air bubbles. Put the lids and bands on.

5) Seal. Put the rack with the jars back in yer canning pot and boil for 25 minutes. Water should be 1/2 inch over the tops of the jars. If you boil them for too long the pickles get kind of soft, which unfortunately happened to some of ours. Remove the jars and let them cool for a couple hours. If you can't push down the lid of the jar, a+ job! Store yer pickles in a cool dark place for between 8 weeks to 1 year. If you can pop the lid down, do not pass go do not collect 200$ the jar didn't seal. Put it in the fridge and eat it within the next few days.

6) Wait. Unless yer like us and opened a jar after 2 weeks.