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My cucumbers are humongously fat so I thought it would be nice to make these dill chips layered carefully into pint jars (makes 6 pints). They are pretty. The recipe is based upon one found at CookingBride.com. She says it will take about 3 weeks before they’re ready to eat. Maybe I can wait. Maybe.
- TO BEGIN
- 2 Tbsp. canning salt
- 3 cups water
- 4 lbs. cucumbers, sliced into 1/4″ slices, crosswise
In a very large non-corrosive bowl, mix together salt and water until salt has dissolved. I used my 32-cup Tupperware bowl. Add the cucumbers and stir around gently with your hands until all has been coated with salt water. Let stand 2-3 hours.
Drain cucumbers and rinse with fresh, cold water. I rinsed my big bowl, added cold water and put the cucumbers into it for a few minutes, then drained it again. Let stand until called for.
- TO CONTINUE
- 2 cups cider vinegar
- 1 cup white vinegar
- 3 cups water
- 2 Tbsp. sugar
- 2 Tbsp. canning salt
- 6 tsp. dill seed
- 6 tsp. minced garlic
- 6 tsp. DRIED minced onion
- 2 tsp. dried chili flakes
In a large saucepan add vinegars, water, sugar, and salt. Bring to a boil. In the meantime, add 1tsp. dill seed, 1 tsp. minced garlic, 1 tsp. dried minced onion, and a pinch of dried chili flakes to each of 6 sterile pint jars.
Ladle a bit of hot brine into each jar. Start layering the cucumber slices into the jars, adding brine once in awhile so the slices do not stick together. Once all the cucumbers are used up, distribute the remaining brine. Run a knife around gently and tap the jars so as to get the bubbles out and use up as much brine as possible. Make sure to leave 1/2″ head space at the top of the jars. Screw hot lids onto the jars. I shook the jars around to get the spices distributed.
Place the jars in a boiling water bath for about 20 minutes of processing.
20 August 2019 update: This turned out to be a favorite over the winter. It’s really, really tasty. We used on burgers and sandwiches.
Too many cucumbers! This one looked good, not sure it’s going to withstand the canning process, but . . . too many cucumbers!
I started with a recipe from Many Grandmas. My cucumbers were so big it was difficult to slice them into strips as indicated in her recipe, but I went for it anyway. Here is how I did the recipe.
2 very large cucumbers 1 very large carrot 1/2 tsp. salt 1 cup rice vinegar 1 cup water 1/2 cup sugar 4 Tbsp. sweet chili sauce 2 cloves garlic, minced
Cut the cucumbers in half lengthwise and then lay the cut side down on the cutting board. Using a vegetable peeler, peel the cucumber down into very thin slices.
Peel the carrots and then use a lemon zester to score the length of the carrots several times. Slice the carrots cross-wise. The scoring will make them into a pretty flower shape.
Put the cucumbers and carrots into a bowl and sprinkle with salt. Mix gently, but well. Let stand for 30 minutes or so. Drain. Rinse with cold water and drain again. Let stand.
In a saucepan mix vinegar, water, sugar, and sweet chili sauce. Heat to boiling.
Sprinkle the minced garlic into two pint jars. Divide the vegetables into the jars and pour hot brine over all, leaving 1/2″ headspace. Screw lids onto the tops of the jars and process in boiling water bath for 5 minutes. Remove.
In case you don’t know what sweet chili sauce is . . .
I had never cooked fresh beets before last year, so I really didn’t realize what I was missing. It’s been a revelation. This recipe is sort of thrown together, so take it for what it’s worth.
Scrub beets well, try not to pierce them. I snap off the long root. Wrap tightly in foil and bake at 350 degrees for an hour for tennis-ball sized beets, maybe longer if you have extremely humongous beets like I did. I baked mine for 1-1/2 hours. Last year I put my foil-wrapped beats on one of my oven-safe dinner plates. It ruined the plate. This year I laid a piece of foil across a metal pie pan and then put the foil-wrapped beets in the pan. I was trying to protect my cookware and it worked. No problem. Let beets cool until they’re not too hot to touch. Peel the beets. It’s easy, the skins slide off. Slice one beet into about 1/2-inch slices, not thin. You probably won’t need more than one beet.
In the meantime, boil 4 eggs to hard-cooked. I put my eggs in cold water and bring to a boil, let boil 5 minutes, then let them sit in the water until it cools and I’m ready to use. I don’t think it matters how you do this. Peel the eggs.
Make a mixture of 2/3 cup vinegar (I used cider vinegar) to 1/3 cup water and a sprinkle of salt. This mixture does not have to be precise. You may need more.
In a clean quart jar, pour a little vinegar mixture. Drop in a few beet slices. Drop in a boiled egg. Add vinegar mixture to cover. Drop in more beet slices, another egg, more vinegar mix . . . layer until you reach the top of the jar. Cover the jar with a lid.
Refrigerate for three days, you can shake the jar around a little bit every day or so. These pickles are so yummy. The eggs are quite beautiful when sliced. They taste great and so do the pickled beets.
Trying to put all my pickle recipes on the blog so that I don’t have to search so hard next year. What do I do with all the cucumbers my husband grew? 
Use the top recipe. It’s from Oded Schwartz’s book Preserving (1996, Dorling Kindersley).
Here’s my start . . . I’ve blanched the whole cucumbers, refreshed them, sliced and added onions and mini sweet-peppers and salt. Then it sits overnight.
After draining and rinsing (I did the ten minutes in cold water) I boiled the brine for ten minutes and then added the chopped vegetables.
I brought the pot to a second boil.
Then ladled into sterile jars and sealed with canning lids. It made 5 pints. Really looked like a lot, but 5 pints is what I ended up with. I am going to keep these in the refrigerator once they cool. The lids did pop and with the amount of vinegar and salt, it’s probably not necessary to can them in a water bath, but it makes me a bit nervous, so I’ll just keep them in the refrigerator. I made these last summer, too, and they do last in the refrigerator for months and months. They are a very sweet pickle and are good served with sandwiches.
This is from Better Homes and Gardens’ Home Canning and Freezing (1973 Meredith Corp).
Note: I quadrupled the batch in order to make 6 quarts. I used my canner to do the boiling water bath. Start the 20 minute processing time when I put the jars into boiling water. Don’t wait for it to re-boil. I put the cover on my canner, but left the stopcock open so it’s not pressurized. Removed the jars immediately at the end of 20 minutes processing.
Foods Passion 