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How to Make Dill Pickles

Pickles and I have a long history. When I was a kid, our family bought pickles from the supermarket like everybody else. Usually, it was Spartan brand, but every once in a while we’d end up with Vlasic or some other brand. One summer, in a totally uncharacteristic act of domesticity, my mother made refrigerator pickles.

Damn, were they good. She never made them again, though, and we went back to store-bought.

Fast forward twenty years or so. Pickles saw me through all four pregnancies. Some women get cravings for ice cream and pickles — I just wanted pickles. My husband has referred to me getting somewhat “scary” with the pickles a few times during my pregnancy with Elizabeth. I have no idea what he means.

Suffice it to say, I love me some pickles. I planted four varieties of cucumbers this year, three of which are pickling cucumbers. (An aside: a couple people have asked me what makes a pickling cucumber a pickling cucumber. The simple answer is that they have thinner, bumpier skin — the better to absorb all of that lovely brine with!) The pickling cukes are coming on strong now, so I decided it was high time to make up a few pints of dill pickles. I used this recipe because, as written, it’s good for making a small batch of pickles (three to four pints) but, even better — you can halve everything, and make just a jar or two if you don’t have that many cucumbers on hand.

First, you need to assemble your equipment:

You need a boiling water canner (if you don’t have one, a stainless steel stockpot will do. A cotton dishtowel folded and laid inside the pot will help stabilize the jars), pint jars, rings, and new lids. **If you want to forego the boiling water processing all together, you can also make refrigerator pickles with this recipe. If you do that, you can use any clean jar you want, and you don’t have to worry about having a pot to process your jars in. I’ll explain more later.

Not necessary, but it’s also helpful to have jar tongs, a magnetic lid lifter, and a jar funnel.

Fill the big pot so that the surface of the water is two inches higher than the tops of your jars. Place jars and lids in the pot (you can do lids in a separate pot, or the same one as your jars — doesn’t matter) and bring the water to a boil to sterilize everything.

While your jars are sterilizing, it’s time to assemble your ingredients.

You’ll need:
2 cups of white vinegar
2 cups of water (tap water is fine)
2 tablespoons of salt (pickling or kosher — not iodized table salt)
4 heads of fresh dill, or 4 tsp of dill seeds
4 cloves of garlic
8 to 10 cucumbers

In a saucepan, combine the vinegar, water, and salt, and heat over high. You want to bring this mixture to a boil. Meanwhile, start preparing your cukes. Cut a bit off of each end, if necessary, to ensure that the pickles will be about an inch shorter than your jar.

You can also cut them into halves or quarters if you want.

Once your cucumbers are ready and your brine is boiling, it’s time to get ready to add everything to the jars. Remove the jars (carefully!) from the boiling water canner. Add a head of dill and a clove of garlic to each jar.

Then, start packing your cukes in. You want to jam them in pretty tightly. This keeps them from floating in the brine.

As you can see, my nine cucumbers was only enough for three pints of pickles. That’s fine, it just means I’ll have some brine left over. Once you have them packed in, it’s time to pour the hot brine into the jars. Do this slowly, and use a jar funnel if that makes it easier for you. You want to fill the jars, leaving 1/2 inch of headspace at the top.

Use a flat spatula, butter knife, or bamboo skewer, and press the cukes together to try to release any air bubbles trapped in your jar. If you find that the level of the brine has fallen after doing this, top it up to keep your 1/2 inch of headspace.

Wipe the rims of your jars with a clean, damp cloth, set the lids on, and tighten the rings. You don’t have to go crazy tightening it — just finger-tight is good enough. The seal doesn’t come from the rings at all, but from the lid itself being vacuum sealed on as the contents of the jars cool after processing.

Place your jars into your boiling water canner, and process for ten minutes. Lift them out, carefully, and set them on a counter to cool. They’ll be quite warm for a few hours yet.

You’ll start to hear the lids make popping sounds. This means they’re sealing properly. After about an hour, all of your lids should have sealed. If you press on them and they’re solid, they’ve sealed right. If the lid still pops up and down, you don’t have a good seal. You can either re-process the jar in boiling water, or just put them in the fridge and eat them within a month. Properly sealed jars will keep for a year.

If you want to do away with the boiling water processing all together, simply add the cukes, dill, and garlic to any jar, pour boiling brine over it, cover, and let it cool down to room temperature. Then put your pickles in the fridge and eat within a month.

As you can see, it’s not difficult. And believe me, the flavor is definitely worth the effort!

Disclaimer: When you know you’re going to be photographing every step while cooking something, suddenly everything starts to look WAY neater than it ordinarily would. I am a very messy cook, and any hint at organization is merely a farce put on for the camera. But it’s ok — they turn out great whether you’re a messy cook or not

Pickling Resources:

While this is a basic recipe I found online a few years ago (and it’s great!) my favorite book about pickling and canning right now is Homemade Living: Canning & Preserving with Ashley English: All You Need to Know to Make Jams, Jellies, Pickles, Chutneys & More. It’s a beautiful book full of well-written recipes that definitely inspired me to try different things in my kitchen. Definitely worth a look.

As you can see from the post, I’m still using traditional canning lids. You may have heard that these types of lids are lined with BPA — this is a concern for many of us, myself included. I do have some reusable, BPA free lids on order, but they haven’t arrived yet. If you’re interested, here is a source that Julia from Snarky Vegan shared with me.

For more pickle-y goodness, please check out this post I wrote for Planet Green: 20 Pickle Recipes to Help You Preserve Summer’s Bounty.

9 comments

9 comments to “How to Make Dill Pickles”

meemsnyc, July 20th, 2010 at 10:09 pm:

I just made pickles today also! I haven’t posted it on my blog yet. Nice demo!

Monica the Garden Faerie, July 21st, 2010 at 8:54 am:

Hmmm, this actually seems doable! I’ll try it in fall. Would sea salt work?

Colleen Vanderlinden, July 21st, 2010 at 9:05 am:

Monica — the flavor would be fine with sea salt, but the trace minerals in it would probably discolor the pickles. Not a huge deal, but that’s the main drawback.

Helen at Toronto Gardens, July 21st, 2010 at 8:55 pm:

Colleen, this recipe looks very non-threatening, especially the part about small batches and refrigerating the “mistakes.” We’re big pickle eaters at our house, so perhaps I need to give this a try. Bookmarked for future use!

Colleen Vanderlinden, July 22nd, 2010 at 9:05 am:

Helen — It really is easy! I hope you give it a try

My Northern Garden » Blog Archive » Pickle Time, July 25th, 2010 at 4:12 pm:

[...] many people enjoy dill pickles, I grew up on sweet bread-and-butter pickles made from Grandma Lahr’s recipe. Pickling, like [...]

Suzi, August 2nd, 2010 at 9:18 am:

Thanks for such great instructions! Made my first batch ever of pickles, and blogged about it here: http://suziofthestars.blogspot.com/2010/08/first-dill-pickles.html

Thanks for making it so easy

Colleen Vanderlinden, August 2nd, 2010 at 10:29 am:

Suzi — I just checked out your post! Your pickles look great, and I’m so happy this post was useful to you!! Thank you

Becky J, August 8th, 2010 at 5:43 pm:

Wow, this recipe looks so easy! I have already made several batches of pickles this summer and need to make more, My first batches were made with a packet of spices I found at the store because I was intimidated while looking for recipes online (this is my first year pickling), but this looks just as easy as the packets! I am going to make them tonight! Thanks for putting this recipe out there!

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From the Archives

How to Make Dill Pickles

9 comments

9 comments to “How to Make Dill Pickles”

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