Many.. An 80% vinegar and 20% water ratio is used. I use even more vinegar here, only because 'I push the envelope' when it comes to the heating part,as its shorter than would would be a quart processing time. Also a bit longer processing time is required for quarts. Pickles with high vinegar in the right amount are considered quite safe. Interesting enough. Mrs. Wages mixes offer two sizes of dill pickle mixes. The smaller sice packet is meant for 4-5 pints, while the larger package makes up to 7-10 quarts. Is your BBB a current version? Check out the photos in another tread here. They show quarts of pickle slices.

Have you checked out National Center for Home Food Processing (linked below)?

Some are pint and some are quart recipes but it gives you the processing times for both pints and quarts on each recipe. You can double the brine recipe on any of them as long as you keep the ratio of water to vinegar the same.

Plus do a search here for 'pickle recipes'. We have many approved and tested ones posted here for all kinds.

Dave

Here is a link that might be useful: NCHFP - Pickling

Thanks ksrogers. I don't use those mixes, so that won't help me. I know about processing time differences between pints and quarts.
Though it has been a long time since I've canned, I'm not a total newb.
;)
I can certainly see how someone new to canning could be totally overwhelmed with all the info and just throw their hands up and say "forget it!"

digdirt, thanks. As it happens, that site is in my favs list. I've been reading and searching this forum for a while and honestly, none of these recipes seem to appeal to me right now. I dunno, maybe I just need to get 'in the mood' yet.

Honestly, I'd just like to find a fab dill recipe that ends with - yield: 7 quarts.
:)
Of course, I'd also like world peace...

Golly, I pay absolutely no attention to yield estimates on pickle recipes. What I'm looking at is the proportions for the brine. I make as many pickles as I have good fresh cukes for -- no more, no less. I generally eyeball how many quarts of cukes I've picked and then I make an appropriate amount of brine. Since I grow pickling cukes in my garden and my garden isn't huge, I often make 1-3 quarts of dills at a time as I pick the cukes. No big deal and easy to knock off a couple of quarts in an hour or less after work. If I recall correctly, for 2 quarts of dills, 2 cups of vinegar, 2 cups of water and 1/4 c. pickling salt will make just about the perfect amount of brine. I don't care for sugar in dill brine, although many recipes call for it. I put a head of dill, sometimes about a tsp of dill seed, a couple cloves of garlic, a few peppercorns and either a small hot pepper or a good shake of hot pepper flakes in each jar along with the cukes and brine. Process as usual.

Thanks ever so much, marymd7!
That's what I sort of meant.
I'll have tons of cukes ready soon, and the 2c+2c+1/4=2q is easy enough. I can parsel out between the jars whatever dill I have that's ready.
I just hate wasting anything, including the electric every time I do one or two quarts. It adds up. So do wasted ingredients.
Thanks again.
:)

I have to admit that I have trouble understanding the "yields 7 quarts" restriction you have imposed on yourself. ;) Even the ones that do make that claim always turn out with more or less.

Why isn't taste the crucial factor? Lots of "fab" recipes available regardless of the # of quarts yielded that could easily be used to produce 7 quarts or 27 quarts. So can you be more specific as to what you want to see in the recipe itself that would make it appeal to you? Like are you only interested in recipes that use dill seed rather than dill heads, or B&B recipes with no onions included, or sweets that are whole cuke rather than chunks or slices?

With that kind of info we might at least be able to narrow down the recipes to a couple of hundred. ;)

Dave

Well, Dave, honestly, it has much more to do with money than flavor.

My canner fits 7 quarts, so I'll be doing 7 quarts at a time, or 14, etc. so I won't be wasting electric. Anything leftover will be fridge pickles, but I won't if I don't have to. I would consider wasting vinegar or brine a waste of money. Granted, it may be just a few pennies worth, but it's still a few pennies worth that could go towards something else.

Dill amounts will be defined by what I can harvest from my yard, whether seed or heads. No more, no less.

Garlic amounts will have to be determined by what is left over in the weekly grocery bill. I haven't had garlic in this house for years - it's a luxury item. I may end up not adding any to the pickles at all.

I certainly won't be adding sugar.

Basically, the less ingredients the better. Or rather, the more I can omit and the end result still be edible, the better.

I have tons of peppers and onions growing in the garden, but most will be frozen to use in meals, and whatever I think I can reserve for other things will go in the pickles.

That's why a lot of these recipes don't appeal to me - they take extra ingredients I just don't have the extra money for.

If worse comes to worse this winter, we may have to freeze, but we won't starve. I'm canning out of necessity, not for fun.

It's going to be a really depressing winter for a lot of us.

I haven't started to make any vinegar based dills yet, beyond the half sour salt brines. The mixes are simply used to give me more dill flavor. Without a mix, the plain salt, vinegar, and water, even with a huge amount of fresh dill weed and seed, isn't quite enough for my taste, even if I pack 1/4 part of a half gallon jar with it. I also add several cloves of garlic. The dill taste in mRs wages is goo and strong and helps to compliment the add fresh dill. I do similar with B&Bs as they also get a lot of added mustard, and celery seed.
Picked about 15 pickling cukes today, and 3 were like little watermelons, I had missed for days. They were even yellow color, far too big for use in much of anything. The 7 quart, number was a typical number used many years for the most common canners, BWB or pressure. It seems that the number was a good starting point for a managable batch many years ago. Today, even 7 quart jars may NOT fit in some canners due to the metric changes of the jars sizes. I do pints of jelly and hate dealing with tiny eight ounce jars, that require lot more work in filling, etc.
A 'good' dill recipe can vary greatly. From a fermented type to a sweet type, with many directions in between. Some dill recipes use a bit of sugar, or bay leaf, or coriander, mustard seed, tumeric, alum, peppercorns, garlic, and so many other herbs the 'basic dill' can get lost in the shuffle.
Dill seed heads are also variable, dried right on the plants and snipped off as whole heads, cut earlier when still swelled and green, as well a using a lot of the ferny leaves. Dried is no match here, but an extract (oil) of dill dill flavor an help boost the batch to a much higher level. One one single jar of my dills (or other kinds) has ever been turned down, or was not met with praise of some kind. I must be doing something right..

I'm no pickle authority but a 1:1 ratio (2 cups water to 2 cups vinegar) doesn't sound like a safe ratio to me? Is it Ken?

Most of the recipes I work with call for more vinegar.

But sewobsessed I can certainly relate to and understand the money factor. Makes much more sense to me now. ;)

Dave

Whether we're there at this point in our lives or were in the past, a lot of Forum members know what it's like to face tight finances or be downright broke. Certainly with today's economy the numbers are increasing.

I was going to suggest a fermented pickle but decided against that idea because there's a risk of failure and you can't afford the loss.

I linked to the Quick Fresh-Pack Dill Pickles recipe on the NCHFP site. Double it and you have 7 or 8 quarts. If you end up with 8, one can be refrigerated and eaten first.

You can't change the ratio of the vinegar, the salt and the water. BUT you can leave out the sugar, the pickling spice and the mustard seed with no effect on safety, giving you a straightforward "pure" dill pickle in the amounts you want. No garlic in the recipe, so you don't have that expense either.

Carol

Here is a link that might be useful: Quick Fresh-Pack Dill Pickles

Dave and Carol - thanks for understanding where I'm coming from.
:)
It's sometimes very hard to get people to understand certain situations if they've never been there themselves.

I thought about the fermented, but didn't feel confident enough and don't have a crock. Sending a kid to the emergency room would not be cool.

I read the Quick Fresh-Pack Dill Pickle recipe before, but there's been so much back and forth of whether the lower amount of vinegar is safe or not that I've been sitting on the fence about it for quite some time.

I grew India Mustard this year for the leaves (the seeds were free and my son is into anything that'll leave scorch marks on your tonsils), and have let a few bolt in hopes that they'd be an ok substitute for the regular mustard seed.

I need to simply settle on a recipe and do it!

Thanks, everyone, for your suggestions.

go with Carol (reading lady) and the NCHFP!!!!

Any recipe on the NCHFP site is going to be safe. If you see a recipe on their site which seems to "break the rules" it's going to be a recipe that's been extensively tested so that processing time assures as close to a no-risk product as you can get.

Carol

sewobssessed,

If your India Mustard is at all like mine (I think my variety is called Red Giant), you'll never have to worry about buying seeds for it! I bought some several years ago and planted a handful (I have an in-town garden with raised beds, nothing on a massive scale). I didn't mean to let any bolt, but one or two probably did in the jungle of my late-summer intensively planted bed. The next year I didn't plant any, and found it sprouting up in several places around that bed in the paths! I moved a few into the bed. Every year since, I find it seeds itself happily in a few spots in my paths. I don't need much (I like it mixed with other greens, not having your son's toughness).

Anyway, I'm the opposite kind of canner from you---I do it for fun and taste, mostly, and with just me and DH in the house, a few pints (or even, for jams & jellies, a few cups) is plenty of most things for us. (Exception: tomato sauce, salsa, and applesauce!). And I don't do pickles, since DH doesn't like 'em at all and I eat 'em only rarely (if I canned them in quarts, one would last me all year!)

So, when you asked "who does that?" about small batches, the answer is "me."

But I have sure been there on the finances front, and I enjoy knowing that I COULD supply a lot of my produce needs through garden and canning if I am ever there again.

So I wish you luck with those dills and your harvest adventures!!

And I hope you have some fun with it, too. (Shh, you don't have to admit to it.) ;-)

Zabby

Dave, note that the NCHFP recipe has, in fact, slightly more water than vinegar. My 1:1 should be safe according to every food safety recommendation I've looked at. The original recipe was my grandmother's who used 4:1 water to vinegar. Obviously not safe. I changed the proportions and like the result.

Mary, I've been told that a 50/50 vinegar solution is the least ratio recommended by the USDA, but it is recommended and a safe ratio.

I usually do dill pickles in quarts, because I don't like to cut them up, I want to leave the cukes whole. So, I can only get 4 or 5 in a jar sometimes, and have to fill up the rest with brine. I haven't figured out a way around that yet, without cutting the pickles, although it uses a lot of brine.

I know exactly what you mean, I grew up poor and then went through a period as a divorced mother when I didn't have two nickels to rub together. Anything I could grow, forage or otherwise get my hands up ended up being canned, pickled, jammed or frozen!

Good luck, and happy canning.

Annie

Annie, just to be clear. We are, in fact, saying the same thing. When I say 1:1 ratio, I mean use equal amounts of vinegar and water. When you say 50/50, I'm sure you mean the same thing (i.e. use half vinegar and half water which is the same as use equal amounts of vinegar to water). Since there are so many new canners here, I want to be sure we don't contribute to additional confusion.

Yes, Mary, we ARE saying the same thing. It was just discussed on another thread, with Linda Lou saying a mixture of half water and half vinegar with at least 5% acidity was necessary to prevent botulism.

Annie

Thanks for clarifying on the water to vinegar ratio question ladies. I prefer more vinegar for extra flavor and an added margin of safety but it is good to know that the 1:1 ratio is considered safe.

Dave

sewobsessed: Don't forget that you can save your extra brine. If you end up with a little more than you need, just put it in an extra jar. No refrigeration necessary as long it's just the vinegar, water and salt, NO veggies.
I've got 3 quarts sitting on my counter now waiting for my next batch...

Deanna

To clarify (or confuse) further, 1:1 is the acceptable minimum ratio for cucumber pickles. IIRC, there are other pickled veggies where that ratio is not sufficiently acid. Pickled beets would be one example.

Carol