First attempt at pickles
If I had a chance to do this all over again, there are definitely things I'd do differently. Having to rush these due to an impending deadline did not help. I made a few small mistakes that I hope won't come back to haunt me, but I guess I'll know by the end of August. I made 6 pints of hot garlic dill spears, and 6 pints of bread and butter pickles.
Things I'd do differently:
Things I'd do differently:
- For dill pickle spears, use quart jars not pint jars. The spears ended up being too long and I had to trim then. Luckily nothing went to wasted. The 1-2" trimmed pieces went into a 2 quart jar with the left over pickling juice to make fridge pickles (pickle tips!).
- Do not use the wide mouth jars for pickles! I saw these jars in the store and I thought "cool, easy to get the cucumbers into these jars". I did not realize the mistake until I pulled the jars out of the canner and saw all my pickles floating up. It seems no matter how tightly I packed them, it just wouldn't hold. I realize now that the shoulders of a small mouth jar are designed to prevent this problem.
- Never plan to can in a rush. I forgot to add pickle crisp to half the bread and butter pickles because of this.