BarBBQ Bill is out of dill pickles.  This is a crisis situation.

I picked a few pickling cucumbers this morning (they are not setting well thanks to this cool, rainy weather. The bees don’t like cool, rainy weather either, so they’re not out there pollinating the flowers). After picking, I put them in a picnic cooler with lots of ice. Keeps the cukes nice and crispy.  BarBBQ Bill does not deal well with limp, flabby pickles.

We grow two kinds of cucumbers – pickling and slicing (the kind you find in the grocery store). The slicing cucumbers don’t make very good pickles.

After about six hours of soaking in the ice bath, it’s time to make the pickles.

Cut the cucumbers into halves or quarters, depending on the size. On average, 3 to 4 pickling cucumbers fit into a quart jar.

Next, we need some fresh dill. I use both the leaves (on the left) and the seed heads (on the right).

I have seven cucumbers, so I’ll assume I’ll get two quarts.  The next step is to sterilize the quart canning jars. I boil the jars for ten minutes. If you have water with tons of minerals like I do, add a “glug-glug” of white vinegar to the water. It keeps that white film off the glass.

Always sterilize one or two more jars than you think you’ll need. There’s nothing more annoying than needing another jar, and you have to twiddle your thumbs for another ten minutes when the only thing you want is to get the canning DONE.

If you plan to make these, do save yourself a lot of aggravation and buy wide mouth canning jars (the one on the right). Mother Nature did not design cucumbers to fit easily into those regular mouth jars (on the left). And my hands don’t fit in there, either. Please use canning jars (Ball, Kerr, Golden Harvest – they’re all owned by the same conglomerate now), not old mayonnaise jars, spaghetti sauce jars or things of that ilk. Even though canning jars are expensive to purchase, you can reuse them for years.

The other two pieces to the puzzle are a screw ring for each jar (reusable) and a “one-time use” flat lid.

The rings don’t need to be sterile, but I throw them in the boiling water along with the jars.  I’m boiling the water anyway. But all you really have to do is make sure the threads are clean and the ring isn’t rusted or bent.

The flat lids have a silicone seal that can be compromised by boiling them.  All you want to do is simmer them gently just to soften the seal.  Actually, when I forget to put them into simmering water, I drop them, one at a time, into the boiling water while I’m filling the jar and pluck them out after about 30 seconds. Not the right answer, but sometimes you do what you have to do.

While the jars are merrily boiling away, make the pickling brine. For each quart (plus one or two – you can save the leftover brine for next time):

1-1/2 cups water
1-1/2 cups white vinegar or cider vinegar, 5% acidity (cider vinegar has a more mellow taste, but will darken the pickles slightly – it’s up to you)
6 teaspoons pickling salt
2 teaspoons yellow mustard seeds (optional, but BarBBQ Bill likes them)

Place all the brine ingredients in a saucepan, cover, and heat the brine to a rapid boil.

Use a jar lifter or tongs (if you’re really, really careful) and get one jar out of the boiling water.  Drain all the water out (not necessary to totally dry it out).

To the bottom of each jar, add:

1 clove of garlic, cut in half
1 small dill head
1 small bunch of dill leaves
2-3 black peppercorns

Pack in the cucumbers as best you can.

On the top of the cucumbers, add another:

1 clove of garlic, cut in half
1 small dill head
1 small bunch of dill leaves

Fill each jar with the boiling brine to within 1/2″ of the top rim of the jar. A canning funnel will become your new best friend.  You won’t splooch hot brine all over the jar or your hands.  Hint: if you take a close look at the threads on the top of the jar, there’s a spot where there are three of them.  The top one is about 1/4″ down from the rim, the middle is about 1/2″ down from the rim, and the bottom one is about 1″ down from the rim.  Fill it up to the middle thread and you’ll have the right amount of “headspace” above the brine.

Clean off the jar rim with a damp towel.  I dampen my finger and gently run it around the rim.  It should feel squeaky clean, and at the same time, I’m checking for chips or cracks (that’s why I said “gently”. If it’s chipped and you cut yourself, you don’t want to bleed all over your pickles.) Pull your flat lid out the simmering water (use tongs or a magnetic wand, please) and place it on top of the jar (working as quickly as you can to keep everything as hot as you can).  Get a ring and screw it on the jar.  Tighten to finger tight, then give it just a little more “turn”.  Not too loose or you won’t get a good seal.  Not cranked down so tight you’ll never get it off again.

Now here’s where I diverge from the wisdom of the “canning gods” – the USDA.  They require that after you fill the jars, you put them back into a boiling water bath for 15 minutes.

You know what happens? They turn to mush.  I already told you that BarBBQ Bill does not deal well with limp, flabby pickles.

Now, in defense of my contrariness, recipes from Canada and Europe find nothing wrong with sterilizing jars, filling them with boiling brine, putting on a lid/ring, and then just let them cool naturally until they seal.  There’s a little dimple in the top of the lid that will depress when the air is expelled.  Don’t cheat and push it down. As a matter of fact, don’t even touch the center of the lid.

Granted, it’s not as strong a seal as you would get by boiling the bejeebers out of the pickles for 15 minutes, but your pickles shall remain crisp. And delicious.

Europeans and our neighbors to the north don’t process jelly or jam in a boiling water bath either.  They just slap a lid and a ring on a nice hot sterilized jar and let the cooling process seal it.

Since I have both European and Canadian contrariness in my gene pool, I’m going to stop the recipe at this point, and say “Just set them on a towel, let ‘em cool off naturally and make sure that little dimple in the lid disappears after a while.”

After the jars have cooled (about 24 hours), remove the ring and rinse off the jar.  Store in a cool, dark place for 6 to 8 weeks to develop the flavor.

I canned the jar on the right last week, and you can see how the cucumbers have changed color from a bright green to what BarBBQ Bill calls “deli dill green”.

He’s still out of pickles that are ready to eat, but there are six quarts in the basement canning pantry (or, as we call it, the little cellar), so there are crisp, garlicky dill pickles in his not-too-distant future.

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