I've been remiss in posting lately, so I figured I'd get off my backside and share. For whatever reason I've never made pickles at home. Done a zillion jars of peppers, but no pickles. Not growing cukes might be why, but I was given a huge bag of big cukes at work the other day and I said let's do it. I did a bit of reading, and apparently those aren't the right stuff for making pickles. Dug up this thread HERE from
SmokinAl
and read almost all of the 21 pages. Ended up buying a few bags of pickling cukes at the local sprawl mart and going to town. I followed the recipe for spicy as written, even used Alum as I was out of pickle crisp from making peppers last year. Anyhow, here's a short look at what I did.
Soaked in the ice water just a bit longer than 4 hours. Surely I can replace the dishwasher in less time than that

And that's a story for another day, but the job is done.... Had a bunch of different size cukes so slicing was consistent only in length, but hey.. they'll all eat.
Prepped the jars
Filled and vacuum sealed with the food saver jar attachment gizmo. Out of 4 lbs of cukes there were a few that didn't make the cut so I ended up with 6 pints
I'm hopeful that vacuum sealing them really does shorten the wait. Gonna wait a week and try them out.
Thanks for looking, and have a fine day!

Soaked in the ice water just a bit longer than 4 hours. Surely I can replace the dishwasher in less time than that


And that's a story for another day, but the job is done.... Had a bunch of different size cukes so slicing was consistent only in length, but hey.. they'll all eat.
Prepped the jars
Filled and vacuum sealed with the food saver jar attachment gizmo. Out of 4 lbs of cukes there were a few that didn't make the cut so I ended up with 6 pints
I'm hopeful that vacuum sealing them really does shorten the wait. Gonna wait a week and try them out.
Thanks for looking, and have a fine day!