The pints might be fine, if the lower parts of the spears are tender and are long enough to cut in halves. Wide mouth quarts might be the better choice. Suggest that you see how many are in a pound as a round bundle. If that 1 pound bundle can all fit into a quart jar, your going to need 20 jars. If the bundle weighs a pound and is bigger than a quart jar would hold, you may need a few more jars. If worst comes to worst, and you run out of jars, you can also blanch and freeze a few. When I see store bought, the bundle is usually a little over a pound. But trimming and packing in jars can usually give you a little more, if they get packed in tightly.

3 lbs. of asparagus trimmed will yield 5 12-oz. quilted jelly jars.

I like those jars because they're a bit taller than a pint and accomodate a trimmed spear well, are straight-sided, and make a nice quantity for gifting.

Either way, with those measures you should be able to transpose to pints and/or quarts and come reasonably close.

Carol

Margi, would you be willing to share your prize winning recipe, pickled asparagus sounds intriguing. Any hints would be helpful.

Hi, Not Margi, but I am sure if we entered our asparagus in a contest it would win. :-) Really tasty stuff, goes fast at parties. We got our recipe from the web site below. Instead of 6 pint jars, we use four 24 oz. jars, those great totally straight up and down ones. Pint jars just aren't tall enough.

We don't use the optional hot peppers (we like hot food, but it overwhelms the asparagus flavor.) We sometimes add extra garlic. Our only other hint is this: Allow pickled asparagus to sit in processed jars for at least 3 to 5 days before consumption for best flavor development.

Marcia

Here is a link that might be useful: Pickled Asparagus Recipe

Pickled items always need a few days to weeks to properly 'cure'. I also notice that if dry mustard (regular or chinese) is made and used in something, it has a terrible taste at first mixing, but let it set a few hours and its flavor is quite different. Same with whole mustard seeds used in some pickles. I buy big jars of Grey Poupon mustard, and add a lot of finely ground brown mustard seeds that are ground in a small coffee grinder (blender type). It gives the mustard more texture and cuts its saltiness some. The finished product keeps just as well as the regular one, and is also known as the 'country style' dijon mustard.

After trimming and spices and jar filling, we've found 1 lb does a one qt wide mouth jar.

Using several springs of fresh French Tarragon this year - we tried that with a couple jars last year, and Wow!