Homemade Pickles!

After four weeks of a beautiful Chicago autumn, the pickles my mom, aunt and I made were finally ready to eat! On one of the many days off from school I have had this fall we decided to devote the day to pickling. Having never pickled before, I was pleasantly surprised with how easy it was once I got the hang of the process. The pickles didn't require that many ingredients, consisting only of: cucumbers, garlic, pickling spice, fresh dill, whole black peppercorns, and the occasional chile de arbol or sliced jalapeño. The process involved first washing out and boiling all the mason jars and lids. While they were sanitizing, we cut all the cucumbers into spears and began heating the pickling liquid on the stove. We also used the same ingredients to make pickled green beans for some much needed variety. The pickling liquid was also surprisingly simple, made of just white vinegar, water and salt which we used to, you guessed it, pickle the green beans and cucumbers. For the actual packing process, we put the cucumber spears, several cloves of peeled garlic, 1 tablespoon of pickling spice and 6 whole peppercorns into each mason jar. Before pouring the pickling liquid into the jars, we packed them with fresh dill and several chiles for some spice! The next step was to seal them and put them back into the boiling water for 15 minutes to ensure they were properly sealed, and the contents were mixed. After carefully taking them out of the boiling water, we had to wait four weeks for the pickling process to be complete. Upon tasting them, I knew all of our hard work had paid off! I had a blast pickling with my mom and my aunt, and I can't wait to try it again! Who knows, maybe this holiday season I will experiment with making more pickles and maybe some jam...