Pickling!

The entire purpose of having the garden this summer was to make pickles.  We made refrigerator pickles with success, but are now interested in making kosher dills.  Here's the process:

Step 1: Get your ingredients.  Cucumbers, kosher dill flavoring mix (premade or find your own recipe), water, vinegar, additional additives (we added jalepenos to 1 jar of pickles, and extra garlic to another), sterilized jars/lids, and a large pot.

Step 2: Clean and cut cucumbers to fit into sterilized jars.  Fill jars to about 1/2 inch from top.

Step 3: Make flavoring mix.  We followed directions on the package (boil water and vinegar, then add mix.)  Bring to a boil and stir continually to get mix dissolved.

Step 4: Fill jars w/ liquid to about 1/2 inch from top of jar and seal.  (*Ours sealed easily just by putting the lid and screwed the top on.)

Step 5: Bring water to a boil in large pot.  We borrowed an aluminum pot and there was an aluminum pie plate in the bottom to hold the jars up.  *Poke holes in the pie plate so air gets through and doesn't topple over!

Step 6: Put your pickle jars into a warm water bath so when they go into the boiling water, they don't shatter.
Step 7: Put pickle jars into the boiling water.  Make sure to fill the pot, but make sure jars are stable about 1 inch below water level.

*Follow directions on how long to set pickles.  Our premade package required 5 minutes to set.
Step 8: After setting time, carefully pull out jars and put into a cool water bath.  (I thought this made the jars cool faster before we put them away.)

Now, our mix told us they would be ready the following day, and sure enough, they were delicious!

Next time, I think we'd find a different recipe to make our own flavors, but this was a great start!
Even Piper loves them!