welcome to living a sustainable dream and I'm Krista today I have my cucumbers that I have harvested from my garden and is what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna be making pickles the first step in making my pickles which I'm gonna can and preserve as you wash your pickles you cut them into the shapes that you want whether you want chips Spears or whole pickles if your pickles are small enough you want to go ahead and cut them up put them in a pot and you're gonna let them sit overnight in your refrigerator in salt water that is very very cold let's get started I like to can my pickles in pint size widemouth jars they're perfect for my size family there's only three of us so this is perfect and if you want to give a gift perfect size for giving a gift I have some pickles then I know will fit perfectly in here hole so I'm gonna leave some of them I have some that I'm gonna leave whole I have some sizes like these will be perfect these to me are perfect chip size not too big not too small so I'm going to cut these into chips and then I have some bigger ones and I'm going to go ahead and cut into Spears so that I can have some Spears as well let's go ahead and get started cutting up our cucumbers and if you have any blemishes on your pickle you want to cut them off that's what I do and it's okay if there's like a little you know a little spot on the side of your pickle that doesn't have skin it's okay it's not gonna hurt anything okay so I've got my little blemishes off and once again I have a little container for all my little scraps that will go to my chickens then just go ahead and cut them into chips and I like mine my chips oh maybe a little bit less than 1/4 of an inch or so put the chips into my pot I'm gonna go ahead and keep cutting up my tips then the pickles that I'm gonna go that I am gonna use for Spears and again any little brown spots just cut those oh I think this is gonna be perfect when I just cut it in half I kind of measured my jar because I like my pickles to kind of come right to the rim here and then I have enough headspace to cam and process them so I'm just gonna cut these right in half okay these are a little short but you know what they will be cute little pickle spears just cut them into the size spheres that you want which this size to me is great love it okay oh these are looking super okay just to make sure I'm gonna put a bunch into my jar here to see how they look all canned up in Spears oh yeah that's gonna be perfect okay so we'll go ahead put the Spears also into my pot you know one little trick that I've learned is that when you want to make spheres and chips you know what you can do you go ahead get the pickle you want cut the size sphere you want and then you just use the leftover as the chips and so you'll have both at the end of cutting up all your cucumbers totally fun little tip there when you have a cucumber that's crook no it's curled you want to try and use the most straight part for your sphere and then use the rest for your chips I've now cut up all my cucumbers into the chips and Spears that I want and my whole ones are at the bottom doesn't that beautiful now I'm gonna fill this up with water really really cold water and they say to if your water isn't real cold you may want to add ice do a layer a layer of cucumbers ice layer of cucumbers and ice okay but my well water is really cold so I'm gonna go ahead I'm gonna let my water run for just a minute okay I'm now I'm filling up my pot with my really really cold water now that I have my cold water just we covering my pickles I need to do four cups of water and dissolve a half a cup of salt just love using kosher salt it works really well for pickling okay or that in there give it a little stir you want it to get dissolved so just stir it long enough until it's all dissolved because I use coarse kosher salt takes a little bit to dissolve which is fine okay that looks great now's what I'm gonna do we're gonna take our salt water will pour it into my my cucumbers and I'm gonna just take my little spoon I'm gonna stir this around a little bit I now have the first step completed in making my pickles put my lid on and I'm now gonna have this be in my refrigerator between 12 and 18 hours and after that I'm gonna process them and make some pickles welcome to day 2 for making dill pickles I've had my cucumbers soaking overnight in my refrigerator in salt water so what I'm gonna do now is because I want to use this pot to be able to make my pickling liquid so I'm gonna go ahead and just let these sit in my sink over here in the cold water that they've in it as you can see my cucumbers are in my sink and you can see I have some chips I have some pickling Spears and I also have some little pickles and I'm going to pick a hole I'm gonna let these sit while I prepare my pot for the pickling liquid and my jars and my canner now is what I'm going to do is I'm going to go ahead and make my pickling liquid is what I want in my pot is I want 8 cups of water I've already got 4 so I'm gonna do 4 more cups I use warm water so I can get it to boil quicker I want vinegar you can use white vinegar but again I love the apple cider vinegar organic raw I just like it because it's got all the mother in there it's got all the great ingredients I need 6 cups of vinegar and this is 32 ounces so this is 4 cups and then I'm just gonna measure out two more you want to make sure if you're using the organic raw shake it up a little bit make sure all the mother is throughout will do two more cups okay I now need three and 1/4 cup of pickling salt or again I use kosher salt I love this measuring my 1 cup measuring cup because it actually has lines on for 1/4 1/2 and 3/4 cup so it's really handy okay there is 3/4 cup I need to do 1/4 of a cup of sugar you can use organic I use just non-gmo I don't have organic sugar and then you want to prepare what they call your spice bag and the spice bag is pickling spices you can buy your pickling spices already made for you but I'd like to make my own and so I've already got some that I've already have made up here's my pickling spices put my own little label on there so that whenever I'm pickling I can just go grab this I grab my little cheesecloth my ribbon that I'm gonna tie it with it calls for two tablespoons of pickling spice and you want to make sure if you make your own shake it up oh yeah that just smells so awesome I have it in my little cheesecloth and is what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna gather up all the sides so that none can fall out just like this you can use string or I'm using ribbon you just want something that isn't going to fray while it gets hot I'm gonna tie it you want it tight tight tight and I tighten a knot so I've got my little pickling spice bag and this is gonna go in your liquid like this you're gonna dump it in there and you want it to obviously soak up and be in the liquid okay now I'm gonna take my pot with all my pickling liquid and I'm gonna put it on the stove and I let it boil I like to always put the lid on because it lets it boil quicker so what I have going on on my stove right now is I have the pickling liquid that we just got ready let it soak in there put the lid on and let it boil I also at the same time I have all my jars and my lids in the water still boil my jars and my rings and I do that for a couple reasons they say that you don't need to anymore to do this but I do it because I reuse my jars and I do not have a dishwasher in my offer at home and so to make sure that my jars are sterilized and my lids are sterilized I really like to boil them and there'll be nothing on my jars that will contaminate what I'm canning while that is going I additionally have my water bath canner my big one and it will hold seven wide mouth either pint or quarts I'm gonna put my lid on this and I'm gonna put my lid on my jars because it will come to boil quicker instead of letting all the heat escape so there we go my stove top is prepped ready and we're getting everything boiled up so that we can go ahead and can and make some dill pickles I allowed my pickling liquid to boil for about 15 minutes I now have my jars of boil so they are sterilized I've put my cucumbers in a strainer and I rinse them off and now they're ready to pack into my jars so let's get started this is the exciting part and I just use my little old hot dog tongs to get my lids out in my jars because they grab the jars really really nicely I'm canning seven pints well mostly this may not be quite seven that's okay I love it okay let's go ahead and pack up our cucumbers I'm gonna go ahead and obviously I like to pack mine all all my spears in one my chips and the other and my whole pickles in another okay so as I come across my whole pickles I'm just gonna place them in the jar let's put my Spears in there pack the cucumber spears this is kind of nice because you can cold pack these I really like that these are looking beautiful okay see pan gets another small one in there excellent so there's one of my Spears all ready to go beautiful hot okay it's like I've got another whole pickle right there so I'm gonna load up my jar with the chips you kind of just shake them down a little bit make sure that they are getting packed relatively firmly which I like oh yeah these are looking beautiful and I kind of packed my pickles and pint-sized jars for one their great gift size for two we use them before you know they've been in the fridge too long so I just really like the pint but you know what I'm thinking as I'm packing these I'm thinking my whole pickles I am gonna go and get a quart jar and I am going to process those in quart jars I would like to have more than a or three or more three or more pickles enough in a container I think I have enough for one more chip and it looks like I'm going to have to do another batch of pickles but that's okay I've got more than I anticipated which I'm glad I love it you know as I the more I've canned as the years have gone here I really do enjoy canning and you get to see your finished product you know okay all I have left in here now are my whole pickles and my Spears and I will do that in my next batch now that I have my jars filled with all of my cucumbers I'm gonna go ahead and put in the pickling ingredients and the pickling liquid so what you want is you want a clove of garlic fresh garlic at least one in each jar my recipe calls for fresh dill but if you don't have fresh dill you can always use your dill seeds and it calls for a tablespoon of dill seeds per jar then it calls for a teaspoon of mustard seeds per jar I love to use the white nut or the yellow mustard seeds and the red mustard seed so since it calls for a teaspoon I'm going to do a half a teaspoon of each so I'm gonna do a half a teaspoon of the yellow you know there's a gentleman at my farmers market who makes a lot of wood he makes wood spoons wood bowls well he made wooden measuring is that fun sorry man I'm gonna do half the teaspoon of red mustard seeds there we go so those are my spices that I'm adding now I'm going to ladle in my pickling liquid so here we go oh this is the fun part I love this okay so you want 1/2 an inch of head space part of canning to me is it looks beautiful when you're done you know you kind of get a sense of satisfaction everything looks pretty you've got all the spices the colors and everything it's pretty great so I have a little cleaning rag I'm gonna wipe my lids off just to make sure that there's no pickling juice on them you kind of want them of all the debris and everything now I'm gonna grab my lids I just place them right on my jar here as I pull them out these are gonna be awesome okay there are my seven jars I'm gonna grab my rings here here we go I kind of Center my lid and then I put my lid and I hold my finger down on the lid so what I'm screwing on my band my lid doesn't move and I make sure that I've kind of got that nicely nicely centered but just put the band on loosely you don't need to screw it on terribly tight right now this is just to get them on and I will tighten them up right before I put them in my canner now look at that is that looking beautiful that is beautiful I love it okay here we go now as I put my my jars and everything into the canner I'm just gonna make sure my band is tight not like so tight but you want it firmly tight okay so I've submerged them in the water and I'm gonna go ahead and put the lid on and process them for about 10 to 12 minutes my cucumbers are now pickles and I have just processed them I have my rack in the up position my jars are out of their water and I am ready to take them out and set them out so that they can sit let the lid seal this is so exciting as you can see I have all of my cucumbers made into pickles what a sense of satisfaction I want to thank you so much for joining me today on living a sustainable dream and may we see you on the next video you