How to Make Homemade Pickles

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• Bread and Butter Pickles
• Tangy Pickled Mushrooms

Pickled garlic takes on its own flavor, which is slightly different than fresh garlic, although the basic notes all taste the same. Whether you're a die-hard garlic chomper or just want to keep the vampires away, there's an easy pickling recipe for you. Dehydrate the black garlic and grind it to make a seasoning powder. Peel several heads of garlic and place the cloves on the rack of a dehydrator.

Add garlic, and cook, stirring occasionally, until tender, about 3 minutes. Remove garlic using a slotted spoon, and transfer to ice water; let stand until cool, about 1 minute. Drain well, and transfer to a pint-size (16-ounce) glass or heatproof jar with a tight-fitting lid. Put simply, pickling preserves foods by immersion in a vinegar brine or a saltwater brine to suppress microbes that cause food to rot. Eyeball your cucumbers and make a rough estimate of how many jars you’ll be filling. Line your jars up on the counter and into each of them put the spices and garlic listed above in the quantities given.

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The garlic can stay fresh as long as you keep it in a dry, dark pantry. While storing pickled garlic in the glass jar, be sure to stir it using a clean, dry spoon at least once a day. With that, all the spices will spread out into the pickles, making it more balanced. Letting it sit without stirring makes the spices settle at the bottom of the jar. Restart the canning process with the jars that didn't seal if you have too many to use up quickly. Use new lids on the jars and leave them in the canner for the full 15 minutes again.

Then gently brush the outside of each garlic head to remove the dirt.Discard any heads of garlic that feel mushy or are rotting. Try serving them on toothpicks with a piece of nutty cheese, like Gouda. The processing time depends on the size of the jar.

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Pack the cucumbers in on top of the spices and garlic. Don’t squish the cucumbers when packing them in, but you don’t have to be shy about trying to make the most of the space available in the jar, either. Leave 1/2″ of space between the top cucumber and the rim of the jar. This is called headspace and it is important in creating the seal that stands between your delicious food and nasty bacteria and mold.

You will have leftover brine that can be discarded when you are all done. Now, make sure you give your pickling cucumbers a good rinse, make sure there’s no dirt. Trim the blossom end, I trim both ends, then cut in half lengthwise and distribute in your jars.

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Its crisp bite is certainly garlicky, but the pickling process gives the garlic cloves a gentle vinegar acidity that is more invigorating than aggressive. Place garlic and peppers in sterile containers to within 1 inch of the top. Fill with remaining liquid to within 1/4 inch from the top. Seal and store in the refrigerator approximately three weeks before serving.

You can then slice them into horizontal chips, sandwich slices, or spears, ensuring you have enough pieces to fill six pint-sized canning jars. Finally, add some minced garlic and dill seeds to the mixture. Whole spices, herbs, garlic, and other ingredients are often added to the pickling liquid to intensify flavors. For example, dill pickles include dill seed and fresh dill weed in the brine.

Second, if you press down in the center of the lid and it doesn’t give, it’s sealed properly. If you press down and it pops or springs up, the jar of pickles isn’t sealed. You can always process your jar of soon-to-be pickles again if the can didn’t seal properly—so don’t sweat it if it didn’t work the first time. Spices, salt, and sugar are for flavor and are not for preservation in these pickled garlic recipes.

I think the difference was that I actually used three jars and they weren’t packed as tightly. Not everyone agrees with this sentiment, even die-hard canners. I get it, especially if you’re living in the city. It’s not exactly like you’re enjoying cool summer breezes on your porch, it’s just drudge work in your kitchen.

Before cracking open a jar, look for a bulging lid, a change in color in the pickles, or a change in opacity of the brine. If the brine was clear before and it’s cloudy now, toss the pickles. Before you break the seal and dig into the pickles, you can keep the jar of unopened canned pickles for up to a year. Once you open the jar of pickles, keep them in the fridge for up to a month. Before adding your brine, strain out the solids. Distribute the solids evenly among the two jars, then add brine.

There may be an explanation that doesn’t involve the case of pickles being ruined. That can cause a sediment or white presence at the bottom of a jar of pickles. If you did use table salt or another iodized salt, this could be your issue. It does not ruin the pickles, so to speak, but they may be a bit softer and discoloured plus you’ll see that sediment at the bottom of the jar.

Pickled Peaches

If you've canned your garlic, and opening the jar doesn't produce a hissing sounds from the vacuum in the jar, consider not eating the contents of the jar. This probably means that the contents of the jar were not canned properly, and could cause botulism. Thanks to all authors for creating a page that has been read 26,453 times. This article was co-authored by wikiHow staff writer, Jessica Gibson.