Dill Pickles

Cucumbers, cucumbers, cucumbers…where do we begin.  While we began sometime in July and have completed three bushels of cucumbers and made a variety of dill pickles, kosher dills, pickle and veggie hot mix, some experimental hot and cool cukes, dill sandwich spears.  That may just about cover it.

Dill pickles was the one food item that started us on this journey 1 year ago.  And, we’ve enjoyed those tasty pickles all year long.  The waiting for 2 months while they matured was the difficult part but we’ve enjoyed them daily since.  So we decided to jump in and try our hand at putting up not 1 bushel but 3.

DILL PICKLE SANDWICH SPEARS following Bernardins Recipe

Using Bernardins Recipe we prepared our cukes.  We washed them thoroughly, cutting 1/8″ off the blossom end and putting them in a salt brine on cold water with ice for about 4 hours.  Last year we washed and scrubbed the cucumbers carefully and put them in cold water until they were all done and the brine was ready but this year we decided to try some of the suggested methods on obtaining REALLY CRUNCHY CUKES.  Again, we’ll see. 

I’ve read that it is important to make sure the cucumbers are carefully re-rinsed to make sure that the dills do not turn out too salty.  Again, we’ll see if we washed them well enough.  But, I admittedly love salt and some fell victim during the packing process.

By the end of September we will be trying these little guys.

Putting Up Total:

• 24 x 500mL wide mouth jars