I'm in a pickle and it's all for you!
Today is one of my most favourite days at
the cottage. I get to make Bread and Butter Pickles.
Now, I'm all for heading to my favourite grocery store and picking up a jar of prepared pickles
but every once in a while you want that real authentic homemade off-the-charts flavour -
It's in this pot right here and I'm going to show you how to can prepare your own bread butter pickles.
If you've never canned before, head to WeekendattheCottage.com and look for our posts on How to Can.
It's important that we always do
this safely and that one article goes through
all the tips you'll need to do this
properly.
But this recipe actually started yesterday.
Let me walk through what I did. I start by taking Kirby cucumbers,
cut off the top and the end and then I took a knife and I started to
slice them into quarter-inch pieces and
then I remembered that I was doing six
pounds of cucumbers. So I took out my
mandolin and I process things very quickly.
Once the cucumbers were sliced, I
place them into a bowl. I had a two white
onions, they're sweet, cut them in half
and then cut them into strips.
Place them in with the cucumber's. Toss them by hand.
Now you need pickling salt. Now we need a third of a cup of pickling salt.
I sprinkled it on top of the cucumber and onions and then tossed it together by
hand.
Here's a really interesting trick: you take ice and you cover the top of the cucumbers and onions with ice.
It goes into the fridge overnight and it's kind of an interesting concept. The ice
slowly melts, the liquid becomes very
salty, the cucumbers and onions soak up
the salty liquid. But they also stay kind
of crisp because of the coldness of the ice.
Now this morning, I start by rinsing off
those cucumbers. I did it three times
back and forth rinsing off that salty
liquid. I simply placed it to a colander.
You're probably wondering what all this
noise is about. While in this pot I have
a small metal rack and place that into
the bottom of the pot and then I filled
it with distilled water. I then need to
sterilize our canning jars and this is
such an important step. My jars were
washed. I let them dry and then I placed
them into this pot of boiling water. They need to boil for 10 minutes.
Something else I did at the same time. I added my laddle, I added my funnel that I'll need to put the
cucumbers into the jars but I also added a brochette because when we transfer
the cucumber I'm the press down to get
rid of all of the water.
So all of these things are sterilized now in this pot.
We need to create a broth for those cucumbers to cook in.
I have three cups of pickling vinegar. I add four cups of granulated sugar and then an assortment of
very flavourful spices. We have two tablespoons of mustard seed, 1 tablespoon celery seed,
a teaspoon of black peppercorns, two teaspoons of coriander, and
then you need this classic spice combo that always works in bread and butter pickles.
I have half a teaspoon of cloves and then a teaspoon and a half of turmeric.
I place the turmeric and the cloves into a small bowl.
Add a little bit of water, create a paste
and it seems to dissolve better in the liquid.
That liquid then went into this
pot. I went to stovetop. Bring it to a boil.
And you'll get a sense of the smell now. It's vinegary, sugary, and spicy.
As soon as it comes to a boil we add the
sliced pickle and onion and stir it up
and again we're waiting for a boil. Once
the pickles start boiling, they boil for one minute.
Take them off the stove and we place them here. What I'm gonna do now is
I'm going to take the bottles out of the
container. I'll place them here and we'll
finish off. Also notice that I have my
measuring cup and in the measuring cup
I have all of the lids and rings that I'll
need to adjust on the top of the jars.
I fill this with boiling water and now
this too is sterilized. Hopefully this is
all going to make sense as you see me to
the final process. If you need another
reference, the full story, lots of ideas
and directions on how to do this, is
one WeekendattheCottage.com.
Let me get the bottles out of the hot water.
I'll place them here and we'll do final
steps on assembling bread and butter pickles.
I took the jar is out of the hot
liquid they're very hot and always use
tongs. If you need to use an oven mitt just
go slow through this process.
No need to rush. I have the first jar and I place it onto the board.
This is my sterilized funnel and the funnel is such a great tool
because you place it on top of the top
of the jar and then the pickles will go in
without making a mess. I have my ladle,
which is sterilized, and then I'm gonna
start by ladling in some of our prepared pickle mixture. Now another
thing to keep in mind, as you're doing
this is, this is still going because
once we finished this, I've got a boil
these for an additional 10 minutes to finish
the whole canning process. So it's noisy, it's hot, it's exciting! And making pickles is really a
rewarding experience! I mean again, yeah,
you can go out buy some already prepared. But I think
something about this process where it
just tastes so much better. I have my
little brochette and I'm just pushing down to make sure that's the pickles are all the way down.
Kind of play around with it. I'm going to add a few more.
Don't forget these make wonderful gifts you can't be stingy.
Add a few more pickles and then when you take off the lid you'll see it's coming
up about 1/4 inch from the top, which is
what we want. I would then take the
funnel, place it to the side. I'm going to
take a handy little device which is
actually a magnet wand. I'm taking a
sterilized cap,
place it down on top. We take our ring,
again sterilize, we place it on top and
the expression that canners usually use
is, finger tight.  So it's important at
this stage that the ring go on and, but
you don't tighten it too much, just done.
Just like that. Ultimately we'll be
transferring it to the water bath.
A couple of additional things. This is very
hot. The bottle is hot. The pickles
themselves are very hot. So again, when
you're processing just move things
quickly to the side use oven mitts or a
small dish towel when we're doing this
if you're a bit nervous. But I think if you
go step by step
you'll have great success. I'm just going to finish this jar - hese jars and place
them in to finish the canning process.
Well everything is done before you know
it. There's a very important moment in
this process where the suction is
created as the ingredients to the jar
cools. The suction on top of each of the
canning lids constricts and you'll hear
the jars go pop which is your sign that
the process has worked correctly.
We ended up six pounds of Kirby cucumbers with onion yielded six jars but it also
yielded a seventh jar that wasn't quite
full so this is the jar that's going
into my fridge. I can guarantee you I'll
be eating some of these tonight with dinner.
One final reminder, just go slowly with the process. The story at Weekendatthecottage.com has all the details.
We go step by step. All you have to do is take the first step and pretty soon you'll be an expert canner,
preparing something fabulous like bread and butter pickles.
Looking to create other fabulous things just head to WeekendattheCottage.com.
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Hope to see you soon. Bye Bye.
