Dill with it!

I’m a big fan of the dill pickle. When I was growing up, my mother used to make three-day dill pickles every year just as soon as the tiny pickling cucumbers became available. I still can picture the big green bowl in which she would place the sliced cucumbers that she covered with the mixture of vinegar and salt and dill. She would then put a plate over the pickles, and on top she would put a large can of tomatoes to hold the cucumbers down into the vinegar mix.

We would maybe give the pickles an hour. Before long, we began reaching our fingers under the plate and grabbing a barely-pickled cucumber. They literally never made it to the third day.

For some reason, though I have Mom’s recipe, I’ve never made her three-day dill pickles. It is perhaps because my husband really doesn’t care that much for pickles except to accent his hamburger. I do, however, make and can regular dill pickles, which I mostly give away.

This year, I bought a big bouquet of fresh dill at the farmer’s market for a grand total of two bucks. It was truly beautiful dill. I made my dill pickles, and had probably $1.87 worth of dill remaining. The dill was so beautiful that it broke my heart to think about throwing it away. I put it in a vase, just as I would a bouquet of flowers, and every time I would enter my kitchen, the fresh smell of dill would sweep me back to that Nebraska kitchen with the big green bowl of Mom’s dill pickles.

But what to do with the remaining dill? I was simply frantic to not waste that buck eight-seven. Then it hit me! Dilly beans.

Dilly Beans

2 lbs. fresh green beans, rinsed and trimmed

4 cloves garlic, peeled

4 dried red peppers

8 sprigs fresh dill weed

4 t. salt

2-1/2 c. white vinegar

2-1/2 c. water

Cut green beans to fit inside pint canning jars. Pack the beans into four hot, sterilized pint jars (I used the wide-mouth). Place a clove of garlic, a dried pepper, 1 t. salt, and 2 sprigs dill weed in each jar.

In a saucepan, bring vinegar and water to a boil. Pour over beans in each jar to about ¼ inch from the top.

Fit the jars with lids and rings and process for 10 minutes (I do it 20 minutes because I’m at high altitude) in a boiling water bath.

I used both green beans and yellow wax beans. They are delicious to eat right out of the jar, but they are especially good when placed in a bloody mary!

I recently had a three-year-old eat an entire jar. Minus the bloody mary, of course.