Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
the container, cutting it lengthwise, and tasting it. If it is
translucent and tastes like a good dill pickle, you are ready to
can the pickles. If not, wait another week and try again.
Once the pickles are ready, remove them from the brine and
pack into cleaned and cooled glass jars with a couple of heads
of dill added to each jar. Take the brine, pour it into a large
saucepan, and bring it to a boil, then pour it over the pickles
in the jars, leaving 1/4-inch headspace. If you run out of
brine, make additional brine from 4 pints of water, 1/4 cup of
salt and 2 cups of vinegar raised to boiling. (Again,
proportions are exact rather than approximate—use
measuring cups!)
Put the lids on finger-tight, and process 10 minutes for pints
or 15 minutes for quarts in a boiling water canner. Yield: 10
pints.
Sauerkraut
• Cabbage
• Canning/pickling salt
Any sort of cabbage can be used for this recipe, but larger
heads tend to be sweeter. Remove any damaged outer leaves,
quarter the heads, and remove the hard cores, then weigh the
cabbage on a kitchen scale. Weighing the cabbage is
important because the weight determines the amount of salt to
use—3 Tbsp of salt per 5 pounds of cabbage. Shred the
cabbage into slices of about 1/8 inch thickness, and using
clean hands thoroughly mix the cabbage with the salt. Put the
mixture into a five-gallon food-grade plastic container a little
