September’s Dill Pickles

This made: 3 pints dill pickles, 2 pints pickled onions plus 1 pint extra brine. 

Preparation:
• Wash all the jars (dishwasher, hot setting). Sterilize lids in a pan of boiling/simmering water.


Brine:
2 cups white vinegar (5% acidity)
2 cups filtered water
2 TBSP coarse, uniodized salt
4 tsp table sugar


► Simmer (or boil), stirring, until it’s all dissolved.


Pickle Spears, in each jar:
1 small (or ½ large) head fresh dill, or dill gone to seed.
1 clove garlic, halved.
2 very small bay leaves.
1 tsp pickling spices
• Lots of cucumbers, sliced lengthwise. (I used 4 standard sized cucumbers, sliced into eights plus 4 very small cucumbers, halved.)


Optional:
• Maybe add some spears of bell pepper, or of a warmer pepper, or some pepper flakes, or some onion slices.


Pickled Onions, in each jar:
1 small (or ½ large) head fresh dill, or dill gone to seed.
1 clove garlic, halved.
2 very small bay leaves.
1 tsp pickling spices
• Slice a (red) onion very thin (⅛”), then quartered. Separate the sections. (I didn’t have enough red onion for 2 pints, so one pint is mostly red onion and ⅓ sweet onion, mixed together.)

► Put all the spices in the bottom of the jar. Fill the jar (pretty tight) with onion slices, leaving about ½” clear at the top. Fill with brine to ½” from the top. Wipe the rim, add lid, add ring, only modestly finger-tight. Then boil them in a hot water bath for at least 10 minutes.


► If you have a significant amount of extra brine (I had about a pint extra), pour the boiling liquid in a jar to ½” from the top. Wipe the rim, add lid, add ring, only modestly finger-tight. Then boil them in a hot water bath for at least 10 minutes.

Dill Pickles

My very first attempt at making pickles. I grew pickling cucumbers and the herb dill this year especially for making pickles.

The one on the right is one cup of white vinegar, one tablespoon of salt, enough pickles to fill up a jar, if you sprigs of fresh dill, and two small cloves of garlic, sliced in half, crammed down in between things.

When I finished that one, I needed to expand my options.

The one on the left is a cup of white vinegar, a tablespoon of salt, two small cloves of garlic sliced in half , bunch of Dill cram down in between the pickles , and a teaspoon or so of herb de Provence.

In both cases, I boiled the vinegar long enough to fully dissolve the salt, and I poured it over a cucumbers in the jar, slapped a canning lid and the jar lid on top. I let it sit on the counter for a couple of hours until it cooled off, then it went into the refrigerator.