Canning the Pickles

Canning food has a long history in our country dating back to 1858 when John L. Mason created the square glass jar with a screw on lid and tops with a rubber coating.  The ability to store vegetables, fruit and other seasonal foods made it possible to transport food by pioneers or store food for the winter. 

There really is no fallible method in the canning process; this is why it is imperative to understand the process prior to undertaking your own canning.  Each step in the process can be problematic if not followed correctly and could be fatal to those you love if you are not careful.  With that stated I am sharing how we can at our house but would encourage you to research and create a complete understanding of the process prior to undertaking.  I have read a lot of material regarding the canning process and often I will read "how my grandmother canned and no one became ill due to her canning methods."  The problem with a statement like this is the unknown illnesses from those days; food poisoning was always going on but more than likely it was misinterpreted as the flu or other sickness.  I am a huge fan of growing food, preserving the harvest and eliminating highly processed foods from our cupboards.  In order to be successful at maintaining the ability to do this we need to combine old world ideas with modern knowledge.  Taking those early methods and understanding the science behind them will greatly improve the safety and provide nutritious food for your family. 

Canning food and which foods to can, are important to me as it will greatly impact the product when I go to cook later.  For most of my vegetables I prefer to freeze them; the nutrient content does not lessen as much as it would if I canned the vegetables.  In the case of pickles you need to can them if you are going to have that crunch, and zippy flavor.  Pickles do not freeze well, lol!

Our canning process for our pickles

We use a pressure cooker for canning

Create a new brine for the pickles and sanitize the lids in boiling water. See my previous post for the brine recipe. When making the new brine omit the salt! Remember we brined the pickles first and pickled them in a crock with salt! 

Bring the water up to a boil to sanitize the jars

Slice the larger ones in half

Match up the size of the cucumbers

The jars are filled with new brine and pickles and ready for canning. We left a 1/2 inch head space for the vacuum to work in the jars.

Our pickles were pressurized at 15 lbs of pressure and the process starts when the button on the front pops up; they are pressurized for fifteen minutes once that button pops up

Pickles removed from pressure cooker. It is very important you read how to release the pressure in pressure cooker and follow those instructions. For us it was to allow the pressure to release gradually after removing from heat; we knew it was released when the button popped back down.

We ended up with 11 quarts of pickles!

"Preserving evokes deep-rooted, almost primeval feelings of self-sufficiency and survival, gatherer and hunter, for this is how our ancestors stayed alive. " The River Cottage Preserves Handbook, by Pam Corbin

The above quote comes from one of my favorite books related to preservation of food. Pam writes a unique book on preserving foods, many of which are not commonly found in books here in the states. 
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall writes the introduction in Pam's book describing how he first heard of Pam, "...of first hearing of "Pam the Jam" when she was running Thursday Cottage Preserves, a small commercial company that operated in an almost domestic way, making old-fashioned preserves the old fashion way, with real ingredients. I knew she was the perfect person for the job.", you can learn more of Hugh at https://www.rivercottage.net/hugh-fearnley-whittingstall

There are many other books available for reading on how to preserve and in doing the research you are sure to come across some really interesting ideas for your own home canning. Our pickle recipe for example was derived from two very old Polish cookbooks and I believe the outcome of our pickles were definitely the same as if you walked into an old fashioned store with the barrel of pickles!