This is “Year 2” of our canning cucumbers from our garden for pickles. They turned out great last year, hoping for the same this year. Jazzed up the recipe this time, adding more spices and hotter peppers. The cucumber plants were sold as “pickling cucumbers”, not sure of the real name or species. This year’s batch canned in wide-mouth pint size Ball jars.
Instead of using Alum as we did last year, this time we used a pickling mix that contains ingredients to make them crisp. After much reading I am going to stay away from alum as in too large of quantities it can become toxic. Who needs that worry!
Jimmy bought me a new canning pot, makes the job much easier than last year. It has a gauge on the top that measures the steam and guides you when to start the timer. Pretty fancy meter that shows you when the water is boiling. Unnecessary as the lid is clear glass so you can see when it is boiling. But I played along and used the gauge, once reaching the “green” for our zone we started the timer. First filled with the hot mixture of vinegar and water, they were submerged in a boiling hot water bath for 10 minutes. Delighted this morning to find that the all the seals took.
This year, each jar contains:
- Pickling cucumbers, quartered
- Water and vinegar, 3-1
- Ball Kosher Dill Pickling Mix, ¼ tsp.
- Garlic, 1-1.5 cloves
- McCormick pickling spices, ¼ tsp.
- Crushed red pepper flakes, ¼ tsp.
- Whole black peppercorn pepper, ¼ tsp.
- Dill seed, ¼ tsp.
- Baby dill, ≈2 heads
- Cubanelle pepper (light green), 2-3 slices
- Habanero pepper (red), slivers
- Jalapeño pepper (green), slivers
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