Dill Pickles

This morning I went to the grocery store near my apartment and in the $1vegetable bin they had large bags of pickling cucumbers!  I hit the pickling jackpot.  I bought two bags and invited my friend Bridget over to make them and take a jar home with her.  These are super easy pickles to make.  I love pickles!

 6 lbs. of pickles!  You read right, that is a lot of dill pickles.

 Ingredients for this recipe: 2 1/2 lbs. pickling cucumbers, 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes, 10 cloves peeled garlic, 3 cups water, 3 cups white vinegar,  bunch of fresh dill, and 3 tablespoons salt.
Ignore the pepper, it was photo-bombing my photo.

 Cut the ends off the washed cucumbers, enzymes where the blossom was will prevent your
cucumbers from being crunchy pickles.  Cut each cucumber lengthwise into four equal spears.

Boil vinegar, water, and salt together in a non-reactive pan until salt is dissolved.  

 I used a 1/2 gallon mason jar.   The cucumbers can be put into pint jars as well.  Place the cucumbers
 in the jar straight.   I had my jar on its side to make this easier.  Just before you have packed the
bottom half of your jar full of cucumbers add half the garlic being sure to press the garlic with the
palm of your hand to slightly crush the garlic and release it's goodness.  Add half the pepper flakes,
and after tearing off the stems, add half the dill as well.  Squish some more cucumbers in the bottom
of the jar and repeat the layering of the rest of the cucumbers, garlic, dill, and pepper flakes. 

 The jars are very full and ready for the pickling liquid.

 Add liquid to jar(s), fill to the bottom of the ridged portion of the jar.

Screw lids on and place in refrigerator, these will last a couple of weeks as they are.  You are welcome to preserve yours.  By tomorrow these will be ready to taste.

Enjoy!

Hot Sauce

I like hot sauce, I have a favorite brand (Cholula) that I ran out of.  I went to a store and looked at the Cholula bottle and figured I could do that.  Today was the day for making sauce.   I'm not interested in a hot sauce competition or trying to make the hottest sauce, or even bottling my own brand of hot sauce.  I really like making food that I can buy but better.  Do you like hot sauce, do you have a favorite?

Lime on the left, garlic on the right.  Maybe I should have used food coloring?

 Ingredients for this recipe are: 1 cup water, 1/2 cup white vinegar, 1/2 cup apple cider vinegar,
6 cloves peeled garlic, 1/2 small yellow onion, and 2 habañero peppers.

 If you have gloves wear them.   Press garlic and peppers through a garlic press.  I hadn't planned
on using my garlic press for the peppers, but decided on a whim to do it and oh my goodness,
it worked wonderfully. 

 Just so you know, no you can't press an onion through a garlic press (I tried it).  Dice the
onion instead.

 I decided my sauce needed some color.  This 1 Roma tomato should help.

 Dice the tomato.

 Add everything together and cook over medium heat for thirty minutes

 With an immersion blender (if you have one) blend until everything is pureed.  Cook for
an additional twenty minutes. 

 Pour mixture through fine mesh sieve.   Pour sauce back into pan.

 Bring sauce to a boil.   Make a cornstarch slurry of cornstarch and cold water (1 tablespoon
cornstarch, 2 tablespoons cold water).  Add  cornstarch slurry and stir.   Only add enough to
make it the thickness you want.

Pour sauce into a lidded container.  Add lime juice to sauce.   I added it to one of the bottles
and left  the other bottle without it.

Enjoy!