My Own Home Canned Dilly Beans

Summer brings a wonderful bounty of gorgeous fresh fruits and vegetables. 

Summer also brings the Monsoon Season in the Desert South West.

For a little Hawaiian gal like me, it terrifies me! 

This year is starting to be a particularly bad or good,

depending upon how you look at it, Rainy/Lightening/Thunder Season. 

Today was an exceptionally bad weather day

and I was stuck inside for a second day.

I was inspired by another Chef Talk member, thank you thatchairlady,

to try again to “put up” as my Great Grandmother would say,

some Dilly Beans. 

My Mother is absolutely in love with them and

we can’t find them in the supermarket any longer. 

Green Beans seem to be in season, I guess,

mainly because the price has dropped so dramatically.

So I did some research on the internet and watched

some YouTube on how to can. 

Did I mention that I’ve only done this once before?

One video I watched made a lot of sense to me,

not only in the process, but also in the recipe.

It’s a very simple recipe :

4 cups water

4 cups White Distilled Vinegar

2 Tablespoons Pickling Salt

¼ teaspoon Dill Seeds

¼ teaspoon Red Pepper Flakes

1 Garlic clove

As for the process, here’s what I found :

#1  I don’t have to use Pickling Salt, I could use just about any type of salt, keeping in mind that 1 Tablespoon of Pickling Salt, by weight, is ¾ once.

I have a huge bag of Hawaiian Sea Salt that I brought with us from Honolulu. 

I prefer it, maybe it’s just me, but it doesn’t taste as “salty”.

#2  I don’t have to invest in all of the canning equipment. 

I have a really big pot that my Godmother gave to me, and it fits 6 pint size jars perfectly.

In addition, I found a site that shows you how to make a rack,

ensuring that the jars are not in direct contact with the pot. 

Aluminum foil made in to snakes and fashioned into a rack, genius!

The other necessary tool in canning is jar tongs. 

Wait, I have a drawer chock full of tongs,

just take a fist full of rubber bands and

twine them around the ends, e voila!  

I had all of the ingredients already in the house, even a box of Mason jars leftover from my attempt last summer at canning Italian Peppers, as my dear Husband calls them.  So, let’s get to it then.

I sterilized the jars and lids, dropped in the Garlic and Dill seeds, stuffed them with the washed Beans, poured the pickling liquid over them, put the lids on, boiled them for 15 minutes and put them out to cool.

Not too long later I heard POP, POP, POP, and SUCCESS!!! 

Now we just need to wait for 2 weeks to let everything marry together,

and we’ll see what they taste like.

Since I only had about a pound, maybe a pound and a half of fresh Green Beans, this round only yielded 3 jars, but that’s okay, we can always make more.