It's about time that this blog had some bona fide pickles on it and here they are: bread & butter pickles. We went to the Pasadena farmer's market on Saturday since it was a beautiful day out. Since I hadn't seen an pickling cucumbers at the grocery store recently I decided to have a look at the market this Saturday. One of the stalls had a great selection of produce including some strawberries that were subsequently made into jam. They also had Kirby cucumbers and I picked up 3 lbs. Side note: do not bring your stroller with your child that is clearly to old for it to the marker...you block the entire pathway. Anyway, I pulled the base for this recipe from the "Joy of Pickling" and then added a few twists of my own. I decided that I'd make four different types of bread & butter pickles: regular, red pepper flake spiced, chile de arbol (left whole), and sriracha (or, rooster sauce).
Basic ingredients:
-Kirby cucumbers
-Mustard seeds
-Celery seeds
-Tumeric
-Either: red pepper flakes, chile de arbol (whole), or sriracha
-Sugar
-Salt
-Cider vinegar
I began by slicing the cucumbers into relatively chunky slices, tossed them with salt, and let them sit for ~4 hours with ice on top.
While the canner heated up, I brought the vinegar, water, sugar, and tumeric to a boil and poured it over the cucumbers packed into pint size mason jars. These were then processed for 30 minutes at 180-185 degrees, which is a low temperature pasteurization method (point of that is too keep the cucumber slices crisp, which is harder to do when they are processed at a boil). The cans sealed correctly since the tops no longer pop back up when pushed down These will sit for a month before eating so that they develop the correct flavoring.
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