Last year I had the pleasure of learning the art of pickling from my mother in law. It was fantastic! She has been making pickles for many years, and as my own mother puts it, 'she has it down to a science'.
We started off by heading to the garden. She let us use some of her gardening space the past few years, and use it we have! We have an enormous list of food we have grown there, I'll spare you that because you can read all about it in our 'Growing Food 2017' post. The black beans and corn are especially impressive this year!
Anyway, back to the pickles, we went out and filled our buckets with yummy veggies; cucumbers, crooked neck squash, carrots, onions, zucchini plus some garlic and dill.
Next, the prep work, all those veggies weren't going to cut peel and slice themselves after all!
Meanwhile my lovely mother in law got to work with the brine, I shocked (more like grossed out) her a bit because I brought apple cider vinegar and natural sea salt instead of the standard white vinegar and 'pickling salt'. The look on her face whenever she smelled the ACV was priceless, she hates it! haha
Her recipe for 6 quart jars of pickles is 2 cups of vinegar, 1/2 cup salt, and 9 cups of water for the brine, then 2 cloves of garlic and one sprig of dill in a jar, stuff with cucumbers, then two more cloves of garlic and another dill sprig.
Keeping everything sterile and hot is key, and don't forget to prick the pickles first!
Someone was eager!
