Pickling veggies... DILLicious!

dill is a great herb for canning

I love our bread and butter veggies from last season.  My mom and I snack on them throughout the day. I just take the jar from the pantry and place it into the fridge. A few hours later you have cold, crisp, and sweet zucchini and squash.  I have also eaten them as a side dish to a sandwich, a bowl of soup or a soy dog.  Either way canning veggies has brought lots of variety to my family's diet.

Zucchini is getting big...yikes!

We also make dill pickles and enjoy eating pickles by themselves or as a side dish to a meal.  Dill does not last long in my herb garden and often goes to seed by mid-summer.  I wanted to take advantage of the fresh dill while canning my first round of veggies.  I searched through my sacred text, Better Homes and Garden Cookbook, and found two recipes that produce canned vegetables with dill.

July 1, 2012 harvest

The first recipe explains how to make dill pickles.  I substituted cucumbers with the three vegetables I have on hand.  I like to keep my canning moving throughout the season and use only what the garden produces. Making dill veggies allowed me to use most of the dill from Herb Row and a variety of beans, zucchini and yellow squash from the garden beds.

Victory Garden 2011 - corn, cucumbers, and zucchini

The second recipe is titled Pickled Garden Vegetables.  The recipe asks for a large variety of veggies, such as carrots, onions, zucchini, squash, etc.  I only have beans, squash and zucchini and found this same combo worked great with the Bread and Butter Pickles recipe.  I used a variety of Burgundy, Blue Lake and Scarlet Emperor beans. The key to this recipe is to cook your dill with the liquid and add garlic.  This is very different from the dill pickles recipe, which does not include garlic. Additionally, when making dill pickles you place the dill in the jar with the cucumbers before adding the liquid. I welcomed the variety in cooking procedure and taste. I cannot wait to try my first batch of pickled garden vegetables... mmmm! I can still smell the dill and garlic boiling in vinegar, sugar and salt.

June 30, 2012  canned vegetables

In total, I canned three quarts of pickled garden vegetables and four quarts and 2 pints of dill vegetables. Yeah!

The first canning of the season has successfully added more food and variety to our pantry. My family has begun consuming the remaining jars of bread and butter, dill, and kosher pickles from 2009 and 2010. These yummy pickles will help fuel my efforts in trying new recipes while canning veggies and fruit this season.