Pickles are a favorite snack of mine. They are crunchy, briny and full of flavor, but light and not calorie ridden. Its funny to me that pickled cucumbers are known as pickles, because you can pickle just about any vegetable. I love to pickle peppers, asparagus, and okra! Try these homemade dill pickles with jalapenos!
The method for pickling varies depending on the type of vegetable you use. This recipe to pickle cucumbers came from a family friend. This is her family recipe that she granted me permission to post on the blog. It’s an awesome recipe, leaving the perfect amount of crunch in each pickle.
Variations to the Homemade Dill Pickles with Jalapenos recipe:
There are two ingredients that
require adjustments to personal taste in this homemade dill pickles with jalapenos recipe. First is how you prepare the garlic. The recipes says you can use whole, sliced, or minced garlic. More pieces of garlic (e.g. minced) will increase the amount of garlic flavor in the pickles. However, if you want to eat the pickled garlic, the larger the pieces, the easier it will be.
You can also adjust salt to taste. If you watch sodium content, be aware that pickles are usually very high in sodium. One of the perks to making homemade pickles is that you can control the amount. Four tablespoons of salt will make low-sodium pickles, while eight tablespoons will be similar to store bought pickles. My personal preference would be somewhere in the middle, maybe six tablespoons. Enjoy!
- 10-12 medium pickling cucumbers (~4-6 inches each)
- 3 quart jars with lids and rings
- 9 cloves garlic, whole, sliced, or minced depending on your preference
- ¼ medium white onion, cut into petals
- 6 jalapenos, sliced and seeded
- 9 medium dill seed heads
- 1½ cups white vinegar
- 4½ cups water
- 4-8 TBS pickling salt
- Sterilize 3 quart jars buy filling them with water and place in a water canner. Fill the canner with water so that jars are covered. Bring to a boil and simmer 10 minutes. Carefully remove jars and reserve water for the water bath process. *You can skip this process if you are not planning on long term storage and simply want to make refrigerator pickles.*
- Wash cucumbers and rub the spines off with your hands. Cut cucumbers into half inch spears (6-8 spears per cucumber).
- Evenly distribute seasonings among jars. Pack jars with cucumber spears as full as possible (if not full you will run out of brine liquid). If spears are shorter than the jars (mine were), cut some spears to lay flat in the top of the jar so that the jar is full to the top.
- Combine all ingredients for the brine in a medium pan and bring to a boil.
- Poor brine over cucumber spears in the jars. All jars should be full of liquid. If you don't have enough liquid, make enough more to completely cover all the cucumbers.
- Bring the canner full of water back to boil.
- Meanwhile, sterilize lids by placing in a pan of water and bring it to a boil. Remove from heat.
- Place lids on jars and tighten them using a ring. Place jars into the boiling water and turn off the heat. Let jars sit in the hot water until it cools, 6-8 hours. Dry the rings so they do not become rusty.
- If any jars did not seal, refrigerate those and eat them first.
Do the jars need to be completely covered with water when sitting for 6-8 hours or as much as they can be? My canning pot doesn’t fully cover the jars
As long as the jars are very close to being covered, I think it would be fine.