Perfect Dill Pickles

By vealam

Ingredients

• 3 1/2 lb pickling cucumbers
• 4 cups water
• 4 cups white vinegar
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/3 cup pickling salt
• 6 tablespoons dill seed
• 6 cloves peeled garlic
• 3 hot chili peppers, halved (optional)

Details

Servings 6
Adapted from mountainmamacooks.com

Preparation

Step 1

Throughly scrub cucumbers with cold water. Slice of blossom ends. Cut cucumber length wise into quarters.
In a large stainless steel pot, combine water, vinegar, sugar and salt. Bring mixture to a boil and stir until sugar dissolves.
Place 1 tablespoon of dill seed, one garlic clove and 1/2 of a chili pepper if using into 6 hot sterilized pint sized canning jars. Place quartered cucumbers into jars, leaving 1/2 inch head space. Pour hot vinegar mixture over cucumbers, maintaining the 1/2-inch head space. Wipe jar rims with a warm, wet paper towel. Center lid on each jar and screw bands to just finger-tip tight.
Process jars in a boiling water canner for 10 minutes. Remove jars from canner and let pickles cool on a clean towel laid out on the kitchen counter. Do not disturb for 12 hours before removing bands and storing pickles in a cool space for up to a year.

NOTES
Add 5 minutes for each 3000 feet of altitude ABOVE 3000 feet. I added 15 minutes since just below 7000 feet for a total of 25 minutes.

I doubled the recipe and sliced some of the cucumbers into slices and processed them in quart jars. I processed them for an additional 10 minutes.