Kamikaze Pickling

Wow! Today was very productive! I recently came into some fresh local green beans from Freedom and Unity Farm, FU Farm for short! Ha! These beans were so good. It would only be right to preserve them so I can enjoy three different types of dilly beans well into the winter. First, I had to snip the little stems off all the beans. This was the longest part of the project. With this many beans it took about one hour and ten minutes.

Next came peeling four heads of garlic, sterilizing three cases of Ball preserving jars and lids, cleaning nine heads of dill, scaling ingredients and heating up the canner. This is when I realized that today's project was going to be a major undertaking. So, it was time to pour a glass of wine and get to work!

My canner can only work in six jar batches. This actually turned out to be OK so I don't overwhelm my counter space. The processing time for six jar batches was twelve minutes when you throw elevation into the equation.

The whole process took about 6.5 hours, and will give months of different kinds of pickled beans. I even found a little surprise inside my fridge! There was a bag of cherry peppers hiding behind some carrots! Well, they were quickly prepared and preserved too.

As you can see, I will be eating dilly beans till Spring! The best part is that I made each one different. There will be a surprise waiting in every jar! The master recipe is located a few blog entries back. Eat lots of beans and have fun!!

Thanks Misha!