I don't see the recipe you're referring to and can't tell if you're referring to the Ball Blue Book or the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving. It's always most helpful to have a specific book title and page number to speed up searching out the specific recipe. I think most of us are reluctant to make blanket recommendations with being able to see exactly what we're dealing with.

But to answer your question generally, you can always up the heat in the recipe by using dried peppers (dried whole red peppers are really attractive in the jar), whole black peppercorns, dried garlic flakes, etc. There's no risk with that method.

Carol

The Pickles to Relish book has got two hot pickled asparagus recipes with no sugar on p. 112. The wine vinegar to water ratio is 5:2, she uses quarts, and processing time for regular spears is 20 and fat spears is 25 minutes. It has Serrano peppers, carrots for decoration, celery stalks I guess for flavor, dill seed or pickling spice, mustard seed, garlic, salt, black peppercorns, oregano or fresh dill. She also has one that isn't hot and has optional sugar on p. 111. I made that one but haven't tried it yet.

Sorry... Ball complete book of home preserving page 16.

I think what I am looking for is something closer to the hot pickle recipe on 321 of the same book but with asparagus.

I'd just use the Dilled green beans recipe (Ball Complete, page 308)and add hot (dried) peppers to increase heat as you wish. No sugar and I use only asparagus, no other veggies (i.e. red pepper in the recipe).

Deanna