Wordless Wednesday

Pintest MacGyver - Bread and Butter Pickles

Everyone reaction to my first try with dill pickles was pretty much, "those pickles are huge!" *Sigh* Thanks.

I still had the canning bug so I went back to the store the next day to get more organic cucumbers.

This pintest came via this pin and the information here.

Beware: when I got started I didn't realize how many things I was out of that I still needed and had to MacGyver the situation and hope for the best.

I started off knowing the recipe called for pickling spice and I didn't have any. I can feel a little wary of purchasing this sort of thing, it makes me feel like I'm buying taco seasoning and fills me with silica related fear. Google came up with this pretty acceptable recipe of how you make your own pickling spice.

2 tablespoons mustard seeds
2 tablespoons whole allspice
2 teaspoons coriander seeds
2 teaspoons whole cloves
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon dried red pepper flakes
1 bay leaf, crumbled
1 cinnamon stick (2 inches)

Simple enough right? Not for me when I found I was out of mustard seeds, had no allspice of any sort, had ground cloves instead of whole, my bay leaves were already crumbled, and I don't think I've actually ever owned red pepper flakes.

It was substitution and conversion time.

Substituting mustard seeds: 1 teaspoon of dried mustard is equal to 1 teaspoon of prepared mustard. I didn't have dried mustard. But I did have prepared mustard! To convert mustard seeds to dried mustard, 1 tablespoon of prepared mustard can be substituted for 1 teaspoon of dried mustard.

I needed 2 tablespoons of mustard seeds and ended up just using 2 tablespoons of prepared, plain, yellow mustard.

To make your own allspice: mix equal parts nutmeg, cinnamon, and cloves. This nearly got hairy when I thought I was also out of nutmeg :O

If you only have ground cloves and not whole: 1 tsp whole cloves = 3/4 tsp ground cloves. I chose to just eyeball this one because my measuring cups and spoons have been disappearing.

Don't have red pepper flakes? I used half the amount called for in cayenne pepper.


2-1/2 cups granulated sugar As it turned out I had enough sugar but not enough of other things. At first I put in 1 1/4 cups but then I found out I didn't have enough apple cider vinegar so I took out 3 or 4 1/8cups.
2 cups cider vinegar (5% acidity) I only had 1/2 cup and wasn't making as many as the recipe called for
1 cup water I used 1/4 cup
1 tsp salt Completely forgot the salt because I was so frazzled
1 tsp celery seed Didn't have any and just abandoned all hope
1 Tbsp mustard seed Didn't feel compelled to add extra
1-1/2 Tbsp mixed pickling spice I think I ended up using 1/2 tbsp of my own mix
(cinnamon stick, ginger, mustard seeds, cloves, peppercorns, chilies, etc.)
3-1/2 pounds cucumbers, cut into 1/4″ slices I cut up 2 cucumbers

So as you can see I was going to be throwing absolute skin to the wind and seeing what on earth I ended up with.


In a 5-quart pot (non-aluminum) I have no idea what size the pot I used was, the one I wanted to use was dirty, combine sugar, vinegar, water and spices. Bring to a boil, stirring to dissolve sugar. Add cucumber slices. 

Return to a boil, stirring gently and trying to submerge slices as they cook. I had so little brine they really weren't able to submerge at all.  

When the pot returns to a boil, boil for 90 seconds, then remove from heat. The slices should have changed from a bright cucumber green to a darker pickle green. Using tongs or a slotted spoon, fill hot jars with pickles slices, then fill each with pickling liquid, leaving 1/8″ head space. (You may have extra brine; you can refrigerate this up to a week if you are making another batch soon.) Wipe rims clean with a damp paper cloth and add lids and rings. Process in a boiling water bath — 20 minutes for quarts, 10 minutes for pints. Begin timing when the water has returned to a boil after you submerge your jars.

I used an old Claussen jar. My pickles looked nothing like the one from the pin but smelled like bread and butter pickles should. The slightly puffy top of the jar freaked me out so I ran out of the kitchen and hoped nothing exploded.

I wasn't having a great day that day and an explosion felt entirely possible.

Having no idea when these were considered edible I decided to wait for one of the following things:
1) It really did explode and I had to clean it up
2) I felt ready to try out what MIGHT be terrible

Making Fridge Pickles

We ran out of pickles. We'd have two jars in there. One jar had sweet minis (or something like that) and the other were sliced Claussen (again, or something like that). I had decided that once I was out of pickles I would just make my own because I really love knowing exactly what's in our food.

I have quite a few pins about making your own pickles but opted to use this one for the time being and the information found here at its source.

I went to the grocery store and picked up some organic cucumbers.

When I came home I soaked them in a 1:4 ratio of white vinegar and water to try to get any nastiness they may have encountered off of them and also to help them last even longer if I found myself without the time to make them that same day.

After an hour of soaking in that I rubbed the cucumbers all over with my hand, dumped out the water, and then cracked a tray of ice over top of the cucumbers and added water.

I did this with the intention of letting them soak in ice water for 4 hours to help make sure I had nice, crispy pickles.

Wanting to make sure the water stayed pretty frequently "iced" I came back from time to time to freshen up the ice situation in the bowl I was keeping the cucumbers in.

Then, I washed them with my Fit wash just to try to make sure they were good and clean.

Before I set to work I made sure to once again sterilize my jars. Now when you sterilize a jar and then put something in it you really should put the item into the jar as soon as you can after removing the jar from the hot water. Not wanting to crack my jars because I was soon going to be putting something less than boiling hot into it I let them sit while I worked. This was all really more a matter of me wanting them clean. They were already clean but they'd been sitting about so this is what made me feel best.

Cut off each end of your cucumber. Compost these later.

Then prick each cucumber 3 - 4 times with either a corn skewer or a fork their cans.

 My cucumbers were a pretty decent size as you can see so I just cut them all in half and hoped for the best when it came time to put them in their jars.

Each jar that will eventually be holding your cucumbers will need, a few peppercorns, 1 - 2 sprigs of dill,

and a sliced glove of garlic.

Four jars was just my estimate at how many I was going to need for this.

Here's an attempt at a close-up of the inside of one of the jars.

Pack the cucumber in as tightly as you can. They really don't need a lot of head room.

Now to make your brine; you will need 3 cups of vinegar, 9 cups of water, and 3/4 cup of kosher salt.

Bring this mix to a boil until the salt has dissolved.

Ladle your hot brine over the cucumbers, try to get any air bubbles out of there,

seal, and place in a water bath for 7 minutes.

When you took them out they didn't look a bit cloudy.

After a few days they should begin to look like pickles.

Now let this all sit for at least a month, you want to make sure the brine has gotten a sufficient chance to really do its job.

I intend to spend my month eyeballing them and wondering what terrific taste might possibly lay in store for me if I just continue to be patient.

Pintesting In The Kitchen - Banana Pepper Mustard

Last year when visiting my husbands grandmother she offered me some banana pepper mustard, citing that one of the many grandsons made it alongside his girlfriend. It was phenomenal. Perhaps my ravings were why grandma gave it to me - I went through it really quickly at home.

Despite having asked for the recipe it never made its way back to me. Blame it on pregnancy hormones and cravings but I've been feeling downright insistent that the next time I eat bratwurst it has to be with banana pepper mustard.

Today's pintest comes to us via this pin and the information found here.

This recipe calls for 40 banana peppers that are 5" long each 

but honestly unless you're at a great farmers market or something (and it isn't out of season) finding 40 banana peppers is hard enough on it's own.

I wore gloves through a lot of this process to avoid getting any into my eyes.

I chose to remove the stems before I washed them so I  could clean off any excess stuff I may have left over from the stem removal.

Make sure to wash your peppers really well before you do any cutting.

There were so many peppers I needed to work out of two pasta bowls.

To remove the seeds I just cut the peppers lengthwise

and removed the seeds and rinsed what was left.

After having been through this whole ordeal I recommend at least dicing your banana peppers before you put them in the blender. Unless you have a much better blender than mine, in which case you're probably alright.

Blend until smooth.

My large pot was busy sterilizing jars

so I put things I was supposed to mix into a large bowl. While I was doing so I ran out of ingredients! So I put what I had into the now sterile jars and stored them until the next grocery day.

I gotta say, boiling down all of your ingredients until it can't boil down anymore takes a long time. And my not paying attention for a short while in the beginning made a huge mess of my stove.

You may be better off preparing this over the period of two days rather than in one. If you're insistent on doing it one - start early. This whole thing is pretty time consuming.

The original banana pepper mustard I tried was far more yellow and pulpy than what I ended up with. Mine boiled down to become quite dark, looking quite a bit like apple butter.

I  had more than enough for myself so I separated everything into 4 jars. One for my parents. One for my husbands grandmother. One for my cousins. And one for myself.

The end taste? It was great! I've eaten it on a variety of things; salami & cheese sandwich, ham, bratwurst, and half-smokes. Completely worth the time and effort for me and worth a try!

Kitchen Testing - Kimchee For Mommy

As long as I have been able to remember, my mother has loved kimchee. With all of my pickling and canning adventures recently it seemed like a good idea to at least attempt to make some kimchee for mom.

I made sure ahead of time to stock up on mason jars - I'd run out after the roasted red peppers, pickled red cabbage, and pickled Vietnamese vegetables.

I picked out a few kimchee recipes that sounded do-able and picked this one as my final choice.

Begin with a nice head of Napa cabbage.

Remove the outer leaves.

Cut it into quarters.

The next part of the instructions says to remove the tough inner core. There are two ways you can go about this. First the way you can do this if you really aren't sure where or what the tough inner core is for sure.

Slice you quarter piece as is.

Once it is sliced you will see the difference between the cabbage and the core and can separate it manually.

The second way is still pretty good for those who aren't 100% sure but would like to try to remove the core a bit faster. Diagonally cut across the butt of the cabbage.

When I say diagonally I really mean it. In addition to the general angle you are using from top to bottom, cut at a 45 degree angle.

By now you should have a nice pile of shredded cabbage.

I chose to separate mine into two colanders so that I could make sure that I wasn't going to end up losing a bunch of cabbage into the sink while I cleaned it.

I put all the cabbage into a large bowl and salted it in portions. I'd salt it, mix the cabbage up, salt it, and continued this general way until I used up all of the salt called for.

Here is what the cabbage looked like after I let it sit for two hours and wilt.

While I waited for things to wit I prepared the "sauce" I would need.

Because it's my mother I made sure to use "the good" hot chili paste.

Remembering that some of the other recipes called for daikon I bought another piece. Then once I was putting things together realized that my chosen recipe didn't include the use of daikon. I turned to my second choice recipe to make sure I didn't over-do it with the daikon.

Once everything was ready I thoroughly rinsed the cabbage and packed a mason jar as tight as I dare.

My addition of the daikon made it impossible for the sauce to mix in properly so I poured it back into a bowl.

Added some more sriracha.

And then managed to be able to pack it all back into the jar.

I hope this turns out delicious and that my mother loves it.