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Dilly Beans with @ladeedoo
By Betsy Richter | 1:44 pmMy daughter — the child who is now making me poorer every time we go to the farmer’s market these days — has been agitating for cooking projects that we can do together. I’ve been looking for ways to capture some of this wonderful Oregon produce bounty for later, plus scheming about how to get more veggies into the kids.
After I reminded her of the great dilly beans we had at a friend’s house last summer, she was sold. But since I’m not into pressure canning yet – I went in search of refrigerator versions of green bean pickles.
While I found a few, of course, I had to improvise a bit (as you’ll see below.) And I’m even going to name this version after the kid! So without further ado:
@ladeedoo's dilly beans
@ladeedoo’s Dilly Beans
2 lbs fresh green beans, which made 4 pint jars in our household (we used Kerr wide mouth jars.)
In each jar, put:
5 mustard seeds
5 black peppercorns
Healthy clump of fresh dill weed
Chunk of fresh walla walla onion slice (cut inch-deep slice, then quarter; add one quarter to each jar.)
(Most of the recipes I saw called for 4 cloves of sliced garlic for same amount of beans — but I’m not a big garlic fan, so I subbed in onion instead.)
Rinse and snip ends off of beans (de-string if needed – we used blue lake beans, so had no pesky strings to deal with!) Blanch beans in boiling water for 1 minute, drain & rinse with cold water for few minutes until they can be handled by hand. Then pack beans lengthwise in the canning jars, leaving 1/4 inch of head space.
You may need to trim beans to fit the jars – it’s your choice to do them either before or after blanching. (I gave this job to my daughter – gave her a starter bean to use as the measurement, then allowed her to do all of the proper bean allocations.)
Make the brine:
3 tbs kosher salt
1 tsp crushed red pepper
(I used some smoked pepper salt that a friend gifted me with instead, plus a few extra seasonings – hey, a girl’s got to have some secrets!)
2 cups water
2 cups vinegar (we used 1 1/2 white, 1/2 cup apple cider)
1/3 cup brown sugar
Bring to boiling, stirring well, for 1 minute. Then pour the boiling hot brine over the beans until they’re covered. Put on and tighten the caps, keeping in mind that they are now Very Hot. Let them cool down and then refrigerate them. (I go in every few days and rotate the jars as well, flipping them upside down for a day or so to redistribute the seasonings/brine.)
They’ll be ready to eat after a week or so, but I’m told they’ll use their crispness after 2-3 months.
I can’t imagine having any left by then, though — can you?
Topics: Chef Whims | 1 Comment »
July 26th, 2009 at 7:08 pm
Betsy, just so you know, you can safely can pickles in a hot water bath, no pressure canner necessary. In fact, I just made dilly beans on Food in Jars recently.