My green beans produced enough for us to eat as well as can! I am so pleased. I canned green beans as pickled dilly beans because my cucumber dills have been mushy the past few years, but dilly beans are not mushy. I did some research on cucumber dills. I'm going to try Pickle Crisp next year. I'm going to possibly grow cucumbers, because apparently super-fresh cucumbers make the crispest pickles. And instead of just scraping off a little bit of the blossom end of the cucumber, I'm going to cut off at least a half-inch.
In the meantime, I made fermented kosher dills. Look at that sweet pickle crock my dad found at an auction for me. The wide crock is much easier to fill than a jar.
However, fermented dills are tricky. Too short of a fermentation time, and they just taste salty. Too long, and they get mushy. Mushy cucumbers! The bane of my canning.
9 comments:
I've never found a properly crisp, homemade dill pickle (that's why I make the refrigerator dills), so if you find a good one, let us know!
Have you tried the lower temp, longer time process for cukes? It worked pretty well for me last year and I did the same thing this year (still need to crack open a jar to evaluate though!). Also, I think brining the cukes overnight in saltwater before canning them helped. And freshness of cukes definitely matters. Still aren't quite as crisp as refrigerator pickles but I wouldn't call them mushy. I used the instructions here: http://www.simplycanning.com/dill-pickle-recipe.html
AP, thank you! Very helpful (for next year - ha).
If you find the secret to crisp dills, I'd love to know! I don't even try anymore. We like banana pickles, which are a sweet variety, so that's my usual pickle of choice for canning now. I planted 3 or 4 plants this year, and after one small batch, they all wilted and died. :(
I go the refrigerator route too. I'll be interested to hear how yours turn out with Pickle Crisp. Have you tried the grape leaf method? I haven't, just curious.
I opened a jar of tiny dills yesterday that was from the 2015 season. Still delicious and crisp! (I have a small fridge in the basement just for pickles, otherwise the main fridge would be full to the bursting.)
Dilly beans sound delicious. And what a gorgeous crock!
I'm wishing I was a preserver kind of person. I need to find a couple of bottles of jam, jelly, or preserves to donate to a raffle basket for our craft sale in October. I'm going to have to cheat :)
Crock envy!
I've given up on any dill but quick pickled. Thankfully, they keep a long time, so my fridge is currently packed with what we'll need to get us through the year. My husband likes them in egg salad, so I need to keep some on hand at all times.
I wasn't planning on doing green bean pickles this year as we still have some from last year, but my husband requested some, so I guess I'll be making some!
Those cans are gorgeous.
I never tried making dill pickles, but lime pickles make very crisp sweet pickles. There are recipes on the package of lime. I don't know if it has one for dill pickles, tho. This is just a thought that might work. I always grew my own cucumbers and used freshly picked ones.
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