A couple of weeks ago a friend of mine invited me over to pickle some of her hand grown cucumbers. She's one of those people who actually does all the cool homesteading stuff I just talk about doing. She promised me that pickling was super easy...and it WAS! We mixed the ingredients for the pickling juice (I didn't get her recipe but you can find tons online) and brought it to a boil on the stove. Meanwhile we chopped the cucumbers (about 1/2" thick so they don't get too floppy after soaking up the pickle juice), stuffed them in the jars, added some garlic and fresh dill and then poured in the boiling hot pickle juice and sealed them up. The last step is to boil the jar for about 10 minutes to get a good seal and voila! I was told that they need to sit for about 2 weeks to absorb the flavor of the pickle juice but I couldn't wait and opened a jar after a week. DELICIOUS!!! Seriously the best dill pickles I've ever had!
I brought fresh garlic and crushed it with one of those garlic crushers while my friend added minced garlic from a jar. When we boiled my jars and pulled them out we were horrified to see some nasty looking blue stuff floating around the bottom of my jars. I was so embarrassed thinking that maybe my jars weren't sterile and mold had grown on the bottom (haha, really?!). But we did some research and found out that it wasn't mold, it was my garlic. Apparently this hideousness is actually pretty common. There is an enzyme in the garlic (usually garlic that has been harvested before it is fully ripe) that had a chemical reaction with the pickling salt that we used. How cool is that?! Pickles AND chemistry!
Anyway, I had so much fun pickling at my friends house that I decided to try some on my own. Will and I love pickled eggs. We have always cheated in the past and put our boiled eggs in a jar of pickle juice that we had eaten all of the pickles out of. Well this time, I actually looked up a few recipes and decided to make my own pickled eggs. For fun, I added jalapenos to the mix so they will be spicy pickled eggs. When Will asked me what recipe I used I told him it was more like a formula based on a few recipes that I read through (apparently that is exactly what a recipe is! Is it that obvious that I don't cook?). So here is my "formula" for jalapeno pickled eggs:
Ingredients:
2 cup water
2 cup vinegar
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup salt
About 9 garlic cloves, crushed
About 15 jalapenos, sliced
18 boiled eggs, peeled
2 mason jars, 1 quart each
Combine water, vinegar, sugar, salt, garlic, and jalapenos into medium saucepan and bring to a boil. I used a potato masher to squish down the jalapenos a bit to release the spiciness and then took the pot off the heat. Put 3 eggs in the bottom of both jars. Layer with jalapenos and garlic from mix. Repeat egg / jalapeno layer twice. Pour liquid in jars to within 1/4" from the top and put on the lid.
I didn't boil the jars to make sure the lids seal because my eggs were already a little overcooked (on accident). The lids sealed anyway because the mix I put in was still so hot but I'm not sure how much I would trust letting them sit in my pantry. Since I only made 2 jars and I plan on eating them right away I went ahead and put them in the fridge. Let them pickle for a couple of weeks before popping them open and ENJOY!
Oh, if you are wondering what the beautiful red jar is, Will decided to make some pickled beets and eggs. He just opened a can of pickled beets and layered them in a jar with boiled eggs. He didn't heat them or anything so we'll see what happens after a couple of weeks in the fridge. :)
1 comment :
Awesome, next let the kids grow some beets, plant them early to mid August, you want 12 weeks before first frost (mid Nov usually) Then just do the same thing as here. I just make a jar at a time and keep it in the fridge and don't bother with the seal.
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