Recipes/Projects

Today was the first time I have ever canned anything. I (and 2 of my good friends) decided to can pickles and beets.  So we started the day off by going to the farmer's market and acquiring pickling cucumbers (a very large quantity) and beets (I found candy cane beets which are supposed to be the sweetest kind).  So armed with veggies, and supplies we headed back to my house for the adventures to begin.

First we had to wash and chop everything.

Annick was not as unhappy about chopping beets as she looked.

My beautiful candy cane beets! If only they had kept all that wonderful color after they were cooked. 

Cucumbers

For the cucumbers we decided to put a variety of sandwich slices, rounds and whole pickles in each jar because let's face it, if you bought a jar of whole pickles you make sandwiches the whole time they are open and as soon as you buy sandwich slices you make bbq sandwiches and want the whole ones so we decided to just have a variety on hand at all times.

Then we cooked the beets in the pressure cooker.  I was told about 20 min once it starts rocking and so I did that with the first batch but it was WAY too long. When I tried to put them in jars they started to mash if I wasn't super careful. I think I just cut mine a lot thinner than most people (I have little kids and wanted them as bit-size as possible because beets stain so badly!). On the second batch I only cooked them for 10 min and that seemed to be perfect, they were flexible enough to pack in jars, but not soft enough to fall apart.

While the beets were cooking we started making the brine.  For the cucumbers we followed this recipe (I will type it out at the end of this post)

And for the beets we just used equal amounts of vinegar and sugar (we put cinnamon sticks in one of the jars so I'm very excited to see how that turns out)

Then we put all the spices for the pickles into the jars.

Amanda showing off her great putting-spices-in-jars skills

The finished product

It looked cool from the top. I thought the two  garlics looked like little eggs next to a dill tree. :)

 We ran out of alum so we started using grape leaves instead.

Annick showing off our grape leaf in traditional Greek style.

What the jars looked like with the grape leaves inside instead of the  alum.

This is just a shot of the kitchen table while we were working. Every good recipe story has to have one of those right?

Our admirer. He's learning from a young age how to cook. :)

The beets were cooked around this time.

They didn't keep their beautiful color. :(

Then we started packing jars full of cucumbers and beets.

After the jar was full of cucumbers ( crammed as many as tightly as possible in there) we put a decent amount of dill on top)

These are the beets in a jar. I had a couple of the traditional super red ones from a friend's garden so I cooked them and put them on the bottom of each jar to try and turn everything pink again.  There is just something wrong with eating yellowey beets in my opinion.

Then it was time to add the brine, which had been cooking away happily on the stove.

then I had to take another picture of my cutie practising his walking. :)

This is what the beet jars looked like as they were filling with brine. I thought it looked cool because the pink would swirl up and it just looked really pretty (the picture doesn't do it justice, but it's better than no picture).

This is our finished product! 13 jars of pickles and 5 jars of beets!

While I was waiting for them to all pop the sun was shining in and making the beet jars look all pretty so I took a few pictures of that, too.

The candy cane ones are starting to show off their stripes a bit more. :)

It's now been about 5 hours and all my jars (I kept 7 pickles and 4 beets) except 2 of the pickles have popped.  So if they don't pop by tomorrow am then I will be "bathing" them for 10 min in a canning pot of boiling water to encourage it a bit more.  We didn't boil or bathe any of them to begin with. Amanda's mom doesn't every boil hers and says they work great so we didn't and I have to say it was super easy. The boiling part was really stressing me out as jars are slippery when wet and boiling water is hot and I have a 2 year old under foot most of my day as well as my little guy and all those things combined seemed like a recipe for someone to get burned or a jar get dropped.  So now we let them sit in the basement for 2 months and then we can open them and start enjoying the delicious yummys!

Pickled Beet Recipe (very basic)

Peel and chop beets. Cook in pressure cooker for 10 min (once the rocker starts going) longer if they are pretty big slices. While they are cooking make a brine of equal amounts of vinegar and sugar in a pot. We found we needed about 2 cups of liquid per 1 litre jar (but I packed those babies TIGHT).  Heat brine to boiling stirring often making sure the sugar dissolves completely. Keep at a boil until ready to use.  When the timer goes off, transfer cooker to sink and run cold water over it until seal releases.  Spoon hot beets (just the beets I used a slotted spoon to get them out of the hot water) into sterilized jars. Pack them in really well. Put the insides of the lids (the flat parts) in a dish full of boiling water. Fill jars with brine, pull lid out of boiling water place on top (wipe the rim of the jar to get rid of any extra bine that may have spilled), then screw on the ring (not tight or else you won't be able to get it open later, just until it's on) and set on a surface and wait for the pop. :)  Let them sit for at least 6 weeks and generally more like 2 months until opening and enjoying. Refrigerate after opening. All of the recipes I've read say they will generally last 18months to 2 years on the shelf.  If they don't pop in about 24 hours then give them a "canning bath" for 10 min and allow to cool again until they pop.

Dill Pickle Recipe by Nina Denton


These are crisp, mouth-puckering dills.  Make with the freshest ingredients you can find, let them stande alone for at least 1 month. They can be sliced and picled that way, although traditionally they were made with tiny pickles the size of gherkins.

Wash and scrub small pickling cucumbers (Amanda's mom swears the best way to keep pickles crisp is to wash them in the washing machine, no soap obviously, we just did it in the sink with a scrubber thing). Trim both ends.

Sterilize jars and keep them hot. (We just did it in the oven at 250F for a couple min then turned the oven off and just left the door closed to keep them hot)

Broil brine and keep hot: 3 cups vinegar (pickling vinegar 7% acid, if all you can find is 5% do more like a 70% vinegar/30% water instead of the 50/50 called for), 3 cups water, 6 Tbsp coarse salt.

Place one grape leaf in a jar (or 1/2 tsp alum if you don't have grape leaves handy)

Add 1 piece of dill, both head and frond, 1 garlic clove, whole peppercorns (we put 1 tsp per 1 litre jar), and Optional: Mustard seeds (1 tsp per 1 litre jar again) and jalapenos (we didn't put those in)
Pack the prepared cukes tightly and place more dill on top.  Pour boiling brine over top and seal immediately. Jar lids will pop to indicate they are sealed. Wash jars after sealing as any brine spilled on the lids may cause them to rust.  And again if they don't pop in about 24 hours give them a 10 min "canning bath"