15. 2 jars cucumber, plus 2 jars carrot+cauliflower, all 4 with onion, bell pepper, garlic
Slice produce and cram into jars. About when they are half-full is when you want to slip the fresh dill into the sides with a butter knife or something. This time I sliced the onion across the midsection (so each slice has like 10 concentric rings) but left the slices in slice form rather than popping out the individual rings. These take up less space when crammed in the jar and you can cram in more food.
This time I used Turmeric in the brine solution. It makes the pickles nice and yellow-green like pickles should be, but it will also turn the sink, counter, and any plasticware yellow too. I learned from last time, don’t pour over the counter, at least you can scrub the sink.
A quadruple-batch of brine solution consisted of:
4 C cider vinegar
4 C water
2 C white wine vinegar (I used champagne vinegar this time)
1/4 cup red raspberry vinegar
1 C sugar
1/2 C salt
4 tsp mustard seed
4 tsp pickling spice
2 tsp ground ginger
2 tsp dill seed
2 tsp dried dill weed (skip if fresh dill is in the jar)
2 tsp onion flakes
1 tsp turmeric
Bring to a boil for like 1 min then remove from heat. Stir, and ladle into jars. Let the jars settle a bit to make sure most air bubbles are out, add more liquid if needed. If you weren’t really stirring while ladling, make sure the goodies that settled to the bottom of the pan get divided among the jars.
Usually a single-batch recipe is enough brine to cover the produce crammed into a 1-liter jar. This time I was a bit better at cramming so there was a little brine left over, enough to pickle the remaining cucumbers in a small tupperware.