Pickled Green Beans and Asparagus

 I spent yesterday with a new friend from my subdivision, we went and got some yarn for a couple of projects I'm doing and she picked up some stamps for her classroom.  We then went to Sam's Club, can anyone ever get out of there for less than $100?  Anyway, we had a great time and learned a lot about each other, thank you Cyndi.  Long story short I ended up with a craving for pickled asparagus and green beans.  I'll explain the Glad container in the above picture later.

Not wanting to spend $6 or more for a single jar of a pickled vegetable I decided to pull out the family kosher dill pickle recipe and go for it!  

 First I needed to get the water started so I could sterilize the lids and jars.

Next was prepping the veggies.  I did both asparagus and green beans.  I also needed small HOT red peppers and garlic.  We'll get to some of the other stuff later.

I needed to start by cutting the asparagus and green beans to they would fit in the jars I had.

I measured and cut one stalk and then continued with the remaining pound and a half of asparagus and two pounds of green beans.

While I was cutting down the veg the water began to boil for sterilization, so in they went.  I had to do them in batches.  If you are doing a large amount you can put the jars (not the lids) in the dishwasher.  Here are the lids and seals just out of their bath.

Once everything was sterilized I began to fill the jars.  In the bottom I put 1/2 or a whole red pepper, one garlic clove, 1/8 tsp (per quart, so I used 1/2 of that) alum and 1 to 1 1/2 teaspoons of dill seed. (If you have fresh it's better but it is February so no luck there)

 

I then began to pack the beans and asparagus as tightly as I could.  I must say that before I started packing the veggies I started my pickling mix on the stove.  1 cup of pickling salt, 1 Qt of  apple cider vinegar and 3 Qt water, bring to a boil.  I also made sure I had enough water in the blue pot and brought it to a boil too.

Once packed I added the pickling liquid to the jars and sealed them.

   They then went into the blue pot for a 5-10 boil.  

I began to pull out the jars and had gotten down to the last jar it split open.  I took out my spider sieve and got the green beans out and then filled the Glad container with the spices, green beans and some of the leftover pickling liquid...

The split jar in the sink.  Had is shattered I would have just gotten rid of the green beans but it was a clean cut so I could save them, yea!!!

After I took them out of the water bath I let them cool.  The Glad container went in the refrigerator so that it could stay cold and have time to absorb all the yummy flavors.  The other 5 jars cooled, lids popped and they were then turned upside down.  The will spend 2-3 weeks "curing" and sucking in all the great flavors, spices and heat of the fabulous pickling combination I have!

 I can't wait to dive into these!!