Experimental Dilly Beans

The secret to making crispy, crunchy sweet or dill pickles or pickled watermelon rind is calcium hydroxide - also know as slaked lime or pickling lime.  It is an inorganic compound with the chemical formula Ca(OH)₂ that when mixed 'slaked' with water has multiple applications in food preparation - canning in particular.  

In my five gallon bucket it is a small matter to mix one cup of lime with two gallons of cold water.  Add your vegetables to the solution and allow them to soak. This process introduces calcium to the vegetable thereby reinforcing the pectin in whatever is being pickled and giving it crunch.  Following a good overnight soak you have to remove the excess lime by means of soaking and rinsing your vegetables a minimum of three times over the course of three hours before proceeding with your recipe.

Having previously culled a bag of large and straight Blue Lake green beans from the garden I soaked them overnight followed by rinsing and soaking, soaking and rinsing, rinsing and soaking.  

click on images to enlarge

This is my first attempt to soak green beans in a lime solution and I observed that to remove the lime from the surface of the bean you have to rinse, soak and agitate.  Shaking the beans in a quart jar of cold water seemed to do the trick.  We'll see.

Basic brine.  In a non-reactive pot combine one quart of white vinegar with two quarts of water and 3/4 cup of canning salt.  (Canning salt is not iodized)  Bring the brine to a boil.

While the brine is heating pack your jars.

Into each jar place a large peeled garlic clove then carefully pack the jars with the beans.  Add dill seed.  I'm partial to Penzeys dill seed but any will do as long as it hasn't been sitting in your pantry for years.  Three tsp. of seed for quarts and 1 1/2 tsp. for pints.  In the spirit of experimentation I included 1 tsp. of crushed red pepper to one of the jars.  Hot dilly beans.

Fill the packed jars with boiling brine leaving a half inch of head space.  Add your lids and bands and process in a boiling water bath for 15 minutes.  

Remove the jars and allow to cool.  When the lids pop your jars are sealed properly.

These are going to set in the cellar for about a month before trying them.  I'll report back with the results.
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*A word about the jars and lids.  Sterilize your jars by immersing them in boiling water or running them through the dishwasher on the 'sanitize' cycle.  Lids are easy - heat a Pyrex measuring cup of water to a boil in the microwave and drop the lids in the hot water to sanitize them.  Fish them out with a tongs.