Around my house, we love pickles. We love anything pickled. Okra, green beans, the standard cucumbers: they don’t stand a chance if they’re in a salty brine. What I don’t love is the mystery ingredients of many store-bought pickles (including yellow food dye, which is a known allergen and banned from foods in Europe). On top of that, the high cost of pickled food at the farmer’s market is a little hard to swallow.
For the last few summers, I’ve been making pickles from a recipe passed down to me from my mother. I love the recipe for its inexpensive ingredients and the fact that it’s a healthy snack my 7-year-old loves to eat.
It’s also my “go-to” because I don’t know how to pickle or can. When I look it up and see all the instructions to boil lids and disinfect jars, my eyes cross, and I get overwhelmed. (Pickling is number 1 on my summer “to-do” list as something I want to learn. I fancy myself a pretty good cook and a reasonably smart individual. Surely I can learn.)
Aside from finding some awesome recipes, I’d better set myself on doing pickling safely. Back in 2015, I heard about a woman in Ashe County contracting botulism from one bite of a home-canned carrot. It turns out she didn’t execute her canning technique exactly correctly, which left the opportunity for bacteria to grow inside the jar.
This story doesn’t exactly make me feel confident about my canning potential, but people have canned for hundreds of years. But, according to what I’ve read, canning correctly comes down to properly washing your jars and lids and properly submerging jars in boiling water. If pressure canning, the contents of the jar must be heated to 240 degrees Fahrenheit to eliminate the risk of foodborne bacteria.
Aside from the pleasure of knowing what my family is eating and having a neat activity to do with my kids, canning can also save money once you have the proper tools and enough jars. I found one blogger estimated that to make grape jelly, it costs her 94 cents a quart. Other websites indicate that unless you’re canning items that are free or cheap for you (i.e, vegetables from your garden or the neighbors down the street), you may not save any money at all.
Below is my mom’s pickle recipe. Happy canning!
24-Hour Pickles
1. Cut cucumbers in half.
2. Soak overnight in plain water in the fridge (or in a bowl of ice water) to get crisp.
3. The next day (24 hours later), combine and boil:
- 1 1/4 cup white vinegar
- 2 qt water
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 1/4 cup salt
4. Let the brine cool.
5. In quart jars, put 3-4 stalks of fresh dill, 3 or 4 pieces of fresh garlic, and a few hot peppers, if you like.
6. Stuff cucumbers into jars as tightly as you can, then pour cooled brine over everything.
7. Cover with lids and put in the refrigerator. Pickles are usually ready in about 3 days.
Photo by SuckerPunch Gourmet on Unsplash
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