Pickles

The joy of a sandwich is in the pickles. Sunshine would contest this, as she really likes the bread. I do love pickles, and onions on homemade bread. Add a vegetarian patty, some garden greens and home made mayo... truly you have a recipe for lunch bliss.

Back to the pickles... It is impossible to get pickles as good as I will tell you how to make. They can not be purchased-- at any price. I would surely buy them if they were for sale, and you are welcome and encouraged to make pickles for part of your cash crop. So what is so special about home made pickles?

1. Use mineral rich and nutritious cucumbers without a load of pesticides
2. The cucumber patch will bear so heavily that you have to do something with them! With such a supply you can indulge yourself to pick some small cucumbers for pickling.
3. You can avoid vinegar and sidestep pickling of your gut.
4. The process does not involve spoilage / fermentation, so it is quick and relatively easy.
5. The acidic portion is lemon juice, which is the only component we do not raise on our farm. Everything you put in is the best quality components possible.
6. You get to be artistic and creative as you pack your jars. Your pickle jars can be a work of art in themselves.

The recipe:

(Special thanks to our close friends for sharing this recipe with us a few years back.) Plan on around 2 cups of liquid per packed quart jar. Mix up the liquid portion of the recipe, and heat to a boil. This will be poured over the solids assembled in the jar and then water bathed for 8 mins. Our smallest canner can process 3 quart jars. We have the larger 7 quart jar canner that I often use. I don't pressure the pickles, just water bath at a rolling boil.

Ingredient              1 quart              3 quarts          7 quarts

Water                    1.5 c                   3 c                 9 c
Lemon juice           0.5 c                  1 c                 2.5 c
Salt                        1.5 T                  3 T                 1 c


In each jar, place:

1 grape leaf or slice of cabbage (to keep the pickles crisp)
1/4 onion sliced
2 stalks of dill
1-2 garlic cloves

Place the grape leaf in the bottom of the jar. Pack the jar tight with cucumbers, and layer the cloves and onions as you go. A friend told me that removing the blossom end of the cucumber will also improve crispness. With some research, I found a claim that there is an enzyme in the blossom end that may contribute to softness. Cut 1/8 inch from the blossom end to remove this potential.

Some suggest using soft water in your recipe, or boiling hard water the day before and pouring off the lop layer for use.

Once all of your jars are assembled with the layered cucumbers, pour in the boiling liquid, seal the jar and water bath at a boil for 8 mins. When the time is up, immediately remove the jars and tighten the lids. Set them out to cool apart from other jars so they do not as a group exchange heat with each other. The heating process will soften your pickles, so quickly cooling them is the goal.


Our experience:

We have canned pickles with this recipe for two years now, and last year we grew our own onions, garlic and dill. We had a lot of pickles to can. Early in the canning process last year, I found I was loosing a high percentage to spoilage (47%). Needless to say, when you are growing the cucumbers, the onions, the garlic and dill, to loose a quart jar to spoilage, it is enough to bring you to tears. (Well, almost.)  I came to four hypotheses for our spoilage trouble:

1. I tightened the large mouth lids too tight, and the pressure caused the lids to loosen / buckle and fail.
2. I experimented with lower amounts of lemon juice in the early batches. My memory from two years ago was that the lemon juice was a bit strong. I tried decreasing the lemon juice down to 2 c per 7 quart mix. This could have made the mixture more pH friendly to spoilage organisms.
3. Acid in the mixture ate through the (now cheaply made) metal lids, causing them to fail.
4. Heating time might have not been long enough.

To mitigate these possible factors:

1. I was careful not to over tighten the large mouth lids.
2. I returned to the original recipe, and used 3c lemon juice per 7 quart batch. Later I tried 2.5 c with no increase in spoilage.
3. Since we only had metal lids, I was not able to modify this concern. I did take care not to get the contents liquid on the underside of the lid, if possible. I will use Tattler lids from now on.
4. I increased heating time, and then later returned back to 8 mins. with no increase in spoilage. I suggest you not fudge the water bath time to less than 8 mins. of rolling boil.

Note, if a jar was once sealed, and you find it unsealed in the pantry, DO NOT EAT THE CONTENTS! Discard it safely where no animals or children will get to it. Consider it spoiled, even if it appears "normal". This canning wisdom would apply to any canned product, but be especially cautious of low acid foods.


Our canning goals are based on a yearly cycle, and we figure out how many quarts we would like in an average week. This past year we aimed for 2 quarts a week, and that led to our target of 104 quarts of pickles for the year. Remember that you will have all of the cucumber season to prepare them. I would often do 3 or 7 quarts every other day, and a few batches of 21 quarts, till our yearly quota was met. Let the cucumbers seep in the canned jars of lemon juice, onions and garlic for at least 2 weeks. I prefer to wait a month before opening a jar.

Prepare now to can pickles this coming year. You need some extra cucumber rows, onions and plenty of dill. The delicious results will improve your sandwiches all year long.