I Love Canning: the Pickle Chronicles

What a great summer it's been! I hope you've been keeping busy with the harvests in your own areas. We've been sampling all sorts of local goodies this summer. Some of them I've dehydrated - more on that, soon - others I've canned.

What weird and wonderful things are brewing?

Water bath canning is a stand-by for a lot of things I preserve over the summer. I also do several items in a pressure canner. But there is one thing I had yet to do well....

Make crispy pickles.

It seems like a funny thing, but it had always eluded me. Between not being able to bear adding the full salt content for a pickle recipe, I just couldn't bring myself to adding chemical pickle crispeners. Last time I made pickles, they were a soggy mess.

It started with a trip to the market where I not only bought a 1/2 bushel of pickling cucumbers, but the biggest "tree" of dill I could find. Dill is one of my favourite flavours, so I like my pickles to be full of it.

I've literally hacked off half of the Dill "tree" at this point

Next step.... Clean all of the cucumbers, slowly dismantle the dill, and trim the ends off of them. At this point it will serve you well to bribe a friend with future pickles to help you out. And recruit your husband. We opted to brine our cucumbers over night so the three of us were up well into the night, slicing the ends off and tossing them into the brine.

This is one of many bowls we trimmed that night

We used a well cleaned camping cooler to hold all of the finished cucumbers in brine. We also added a few bags of ice, and held the cucumbers under water with a couple of dinner plates. This was left to sit for around 16 hours before we finally got around to canning them.

Finally we got around to canning the pickles.

Each jar was given:

• 2-3 cloves of garlic
• 2 heads of dill
• mustard seeds
• 2 grape leaves
• cucumbers
• pickle brine

I'd heard somewhere that grape leaves help to keep pickles more crisp, and with them available so nearby at a local grocer I thought I'd give them a try. Besides, they look awfully nice in the jar.

Food should look pretty and be functional

Et Voila!! Pickles.

It's actually been a few weeks since we made them, and I finally cracked open a jar. I had to know if the grape leaves made a difference, AND IT DID. Like a boss. The pickles are delicious and crisp and I'm looking forward to eating them all winter.