Pickle recipes handed down in my family, here for you

[blurose]

I keep my brine in a gallon vinegar bottle and just heat up what I need for the current batch of dill pickles. As for not using fresh dill, I didn't have any either and used dill weed from my spice rack. I used 1 T. per pint jar, which gave good flavor, but my 2year old grandson, who loves dill pickles, won't eat them. He says they have "grass" on them. If you use dill seeds, which I will next time, I'd say about 1 T would be good amount to use per pint or quart jar even.

 

[freshfood]

blurose,

I made pickles from your second recipe (dill) and they just had their 2-week birthday. They were excellent, crispy, tart, dilly - but extremely salty. Too salty for me to eat, but my DH loves salty stuff, and I really made them for him, so it's ok, but did I do something wrong? I checked the recipe again, and I'm sure I followed it correctly, but can anyone tell me why my batches came out so salty?

Yeah, I know, it's because they got too much salt! but really, I can't figure out how - maybe because I was slow doing this for the first time, and too much of the liquid boiled away from the brine, leaving it saltier? I did keep the lid on the pot while I wasn't scooping brine out, but it's the only thing I can think of. Anyone have any other ideas?

If not, I'll just cut back the salt next time, because other than that, it was a fabulous recipe!

 

[blurose]

Certainly, concentrating the brine will make it taste more salty. Go ahead and try a little less salt next time. I don't think it will impact the overall quality of the pickles any. Thanks for trying my recipe. You did use canning salt and didn't measure it with a liquid meauring cup right? There is most definately a bit of difference in the measurement between the liquid and dry measure.

 

[freshfood]

Certainly, concentrating the brine will make it taste more salty. Go ahead and try a little less salt next time. I don't think it will impact the overall quality of the pickles any. Thanks for trying my recipe. You did use canning salt and didn't measure it with a liquid meauring cup right? There is most definately a bit of difference in the measurement between the liquid and dry measure.

Yep, I did use canning salt, and I did use a dry measure. I also made a recipe I found on this topic for pickled Hungarian Hot Wax peppers, and they came out extremely salty, too. But those soak overnight in salt water, so maybe I didn't rinse them thoroughly enough...

How much salt could I cut - I want them to have enough so they don't need to be hot-packed or refrigerated for storage. Everything else about this recipe was fabulous - I got fresh dill from the neighbor across the street, grape leaves from the "back forty", and the pickles came out crisp, stayed a lovely color, and except for the saltiness, had a wonderful flavor. Even though some of my cukes were way more mature than ideal - and not pickling cukes to begin with! So the recipe works really well, if I can just get the salt adjusted right!

Thanks for posting the recipe, and for your feedback...now if you can just suggest how much salt I should leave out next time...

 

[TanksHill]

Hello all. My neighbor gave me a recipe very close to your first one posted. No garlic though. We pickled zucc. It turned out amazing and was the perfect answer to the gazillion zuccs we allways end up with.

 

[blurose]

I suggest cutting the salt down to 3/4 cup instead of the 1 cup. Hope it works.