Pickled Beans

This summer I grew a few pots of vegetables outside my door. A small garden with green, yellow and purple beans, 3 kinds of tomatoes, peppers, red, yellow and purple potatoes and some swiss chard and a variety of onions. I like container garden mostly because I don't have a lot of time for weeding. The biggest challenge to pot gardening is keeping up with watering especially in very hot weather. We did have a lot of hot weather this summer but fortunately we also had a lot of rain.

So, I decided to do something different with the beans. Other years I have frozen them or made mustard beans. This year I decided to make pickled or dilled beans.

I processed them the same as I would dill pickles:

1. Wash the jars and put them in a 200 degree oven for 20 minutes to sterilize them.

2. Wash and top and tail the beans.

3. Make the brine with 1 quart vinegar to 2 quarts water and 3/4 cup of pickling salt.

 4. For this recipe I added an 1/8 teaspoon celery seed and 1 large teaspoon of pickling spice to each 500 ml (pint) jar. I did not have garlic for the first batch but got some for the second batch.

5. When the jars were sterile I took them one at a time from the oven and put 1 dill head and 1 garlic clove per jar then filled them with an assortment of the colored beans then filled the jars with the hot brine leaving 1/2 inch of head space.
6. Wipe the rims and put the sterile (in a pot of simmering water) lids on the jar and finger tighten the rings.

7. Water bath for 15 minutes if you prefer although I do not usually do this for brined foodstuffs. As the jars begin to cool you should hear each lid pop. This indicates a good seal and if you check the appearance of the lid it should be concave (slightly indented). If they have not sealed you will need to reprocess them.

Note: Most government recommendations in both Canada and USA advise pressure canning everything.