Some days I just want a pickle. That crisp crunch and refreshing zip of a perfectly canned representation of summer. Sometimes, that craving is so strong I’m liable to consider purchasing pickles at the store if I haven’t canned enough to get me through the whole winter. That is, until you take a look at the supermarket shelf and realize they’re going to charge you $8 for a jar of wilted, slimy excuses for pickles, loaded with preservatives that have no need or right to be included. Every time I reach this point I vow that next summer there will be more pickles.
My secret to the perfect pickle is to select small cucumbers, about the size of your pinky finger. Whether you’re making slices of whole dills, the size of the cucumber is key. Anything bigger is best suited to pickle relish or hog feed. Always can in pints rather than quarts. Quarts require longer processing times, and are liable to produce mushy pickles.
Pack your spices, cucumbers, onions and garlic tightly into jars, leaving 1 inch of headspace. Cover with hot brine, and water bath can. Wait at least 2 weeks for flavors to infuse, and ENJOY! If you’re giving them out as gifts, consider some cute labels. Chalkboard labels are all the rage these days, but I stick to ball canning’s dissolvable labels because they’re easy to remove so that you can reuse the jar once it’s empty.
If you really want to save money on pickling, buy your canning supplies in bulk. While rings and jars can be reused, lids should be new each time to ensure a good seal. We buy our canning lids in bulk online and bring our canning unit costs down considerably. If you’re looking for a quick fix, you can also try a pre-made dill pickle spice mix, just make sure your cucumbers are fresh and tiny.
Just getting Started Canning?
If you’re just getting started canning, but plan on making canning and preserving food part of your lifestyle long term, try investing in an online canning course. Pioneering today has a canning with confidence course that takes you through the ins and outs of canning from basic canning safety all the way through to pressure canning meat at home. The course covers:
- Canning Safety – Safe techniques to for home canning
- Water Bath Canning – Jams, jellies, pickles, tomatoes, and other high acid fruits and vegetables including low sugar, no pectin variations.
- Pressure Canning – How to safely operate a pressure canner at home to can almost any type of food for long term preservation
- Troubleshooting and Storage – Figuring out why a recipe just didn’t work, and maximizing storage of your home canned goods.
Take a look at Canning with Confidence if you’re planning on investing heavily in long term home food preservation.
Dill Pickle Recipe for Home Canning
Yield: 5 Pints
4-5 Pounds Cucumbers (Small ones only)
4 Cups Water
4 Cups Cider Vinegar (or white vinegar, 5% acidity)
1/2 Cup Pickling & Canning Salt
1 Onion, Thinly Sliced
10-15 Garlic Cloves
5 Dill Heads or fresh dill sprigs
5 tsp Mustard Seeds
5 tsp Dill Seeds
5 tsp Coriander Seeds
- Start your water bath canner in a pot big enough to hold 5 pint mason jars. The water (and the pot!) should be deep enough once the jars are added there is at least 1 inch of water above the top of the jars. Bring the pot to a boil.
- Prepare a brine by bringing 4 cups water, 4 cups vinegar and 1/2c salt to a boil.
- While the brine and canner are coming up to a boil, gently wash cucumbers to remove any dirt, and nip off both ends. Either leave the cucumbers whole, or slice into 1/2inch slices.
- At the bottom of each wide mouth pint mason jar, add 1 teaspoon of mustard seeds, dill seeds, coriander seeds and the dill heads or fresh herb sprigs.
- Pack tightly with pickles and a few slices of onion. Top 2 with 2-3 garlic cloves. Be sure to leave 1 inch of headspace above the pickles.
- Cover with brine to just submerge the vegetables, being sure to leave 1/2 inch of headspace above the top level of the brine.
- Cap and band mason jars to just finger tight and place into boiling water in your water bath canner. Process for 10 minutes for pints below 1000 feet of elevation. (15 minutes for 1,000-6,000 feet)
For more information on the specifics and safety of canning pickles and pickled vegetables,
check out the USDA Guide to Home Canning.
Looking for other dill pickle recipes? Try These:
Ball Fresh Preserving Sliced Dills
Ball Fresh Preserving Kosher Dills
Pick Your Own: Making Pickles
The Kitchn: Dill Pickles
Simply Canning: Crunch Dill Pickle Recipe
Food.com Blue Ribbon Dill Pickles
Have a favorite recipe? Let me know in the comments below and I’ll be happy to share your link.
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Hi! Any advice on how to get enough tiny cukes to can at once?. I always have them growing at varying sizes and have to wait a few days to save enough for a batch. By that time, I feellike the ones I picked the first day are soggy and maybe the reason I get soggy pickles. Also, I never heard the pint jar rule before. Doesn’t that mean there are only about 4- 5 pickles in each jar, though?
We’ve been lucky enough to find small ones at the farmers market from farmers who know how to pick picklers to make good pickles. If you grow 4-5 plants you should have enough for a small canning batch twice a week. Since they can up so fast I just do a few pints a twice a week for about a month. Yes, pint jars means you’re only getting 5 or 6 whole pickles to a jar, but they taste so much better that way!
This is a great recipe! I love seeing people doing home canning, it really is a great project to start and be proud of once it is finished. I need to start pickling at home more – I usually just purchase mine from the store. I know I would save much more money doing it myself. Thank you for sharing your recipe!
Can I use ground spices versus the seeds? Looking forward to trying this out!
Technically, you can use ground spices, but I wouldn’t. The whole spices season your pickles and then stay at the bottom of the jar. Ground spices will cover everything and the pickles you pull out of the jar will be a bit mucky from the spices. Same flavoring, but just shmutz everywhere. If you do for some reason use ground spices, use a lot less. They have so much more surface area they’ll flavor the pickles more strongly.
If I read the instructions correctly, you add the jars to the canner after the water is already boiling. Is that correct? I have always had the jars hot, packed them, then put them in the canner, and brought to a boil. Putting jars into boiling water kinda makes me a little nervous!
Yes, I’d definitely suggest having the water already at a boil. I start the water boiling before I even think about prepping the vegetables. It usually takes at least half an hour for my canner full of water to come to a boil, and all of that time is extra cook time for the pickles. There’s a lot of time that the pickles would be in jars in the temperature range of 160 to 212, hot enough to cook the pickles, but not hot enough to can the pickles. That means that you’re pickles are being “cooked” for a lot of extra time that’s unnecessary.
The brine is boiling, goes into jars and then those nearly boiling jars go into boiling water. I’ve actually broken jars when the temperature inside the jar was too different from the water inside the canner. The thermal shock to the glass was too much.
So yes, long reply later, the water in your canner should be boiling before you load the pickles, to minimize cook time for the cucumbers and to prevent jar breakage from thermal shock.
Where do you add the dill heads? Did I just miss that direction?
Oops, thanks for catching that, I’ve updated the recipe. Add them in to the bottom of the jar with the dry herbs. The pickles will help hold them down and keep them submerged.
How long until the pickles are ready?
In theory, they can be eaten whenever, but they’ll taste best if you give them at least 2 weeks for the flavors to infuse into the pickles.
Do they need to be refrigerated or kept out for the two weeks?
If you water bath can them as instructed, they do not need to be refrigerated. Water bath canned pickles are shelf stable, until they’re opened. Once you open the jar, they’ll keep in the refrigerator for months. While you’re waiting 2 weeks for the flavors to infuse, keep them at room temperature out of direct sunlight (i.e. in your pantry).