Making most jams is fairly quick – through everything in a pot, bring to a set, jar and seal. Pickles can be another story altogether – each jar is removed from the sterilized hot water before individual ingredients are measured into the jar (5 black peppercorns, a quarter teaspoon of chilli flakes, half teaspoon of cardamom and so on).
It’s painstaking work that slows the entire process down – you can’t do many jars at once less they chill and you risk thermal shock and bottle breakage.The biggest pain is remembering the recipe – going back and checking and hoping that you’re not missing something in this bottle (or was it the one before?).
In a batch of 12 jars this constant measuring can easily add 20-30 minutes to the process. It’s more troubling that this means that the first jar of pickles often hits the water bath (or just as bad, cools on the counter) up to 30 minutes longer than the last.
It’s probably not that novel but it’s something I do a lot and highly recommend if you don’t:
Here’s the step by step:
- Take every glass, cup or bowl you own out of storage.
- Measure all ingredients which will be put individually in hot jars – one glass per final jar
- If ingredients stick to glass pour a little hot water in each glass before dumping
- Dump in each jar. Say a magic word when you do. I like “Shazam!” or “Boo-ya.” The “ya” must always be shorter than the “boo.”
- If you’re cheeky call someone else to clean your glasses. Fake an injury if you have to.
OK #5 is made-up. It takes far less time to clean up your glasses than it would to measure each individually in the jars. By using the glass method (we also have small “appetizer plates” that would fit one piece of sushi from Chinatown for this purpose) you are able to measure all of your black pepper at once, then all your coriander, etc. It’s far quicker and, for me, far more enjoyable.
Any more tricks out there? I hope this one helped!
I’m confused- is this a method to make sure you have the same amount of seasoning in each jar? Because I’ve been making pickles for 30 years and have never done anything remotely like what you describe here.
Heya Heather,
Many of our recipes indeed call for individual measurements into bottles – cooking the brine seperate and then adding whatever you are pickling plus the dry ingredients to each jar before filling with brine, covering with a lid and moving on. This is especially handy if using things like bay leaves, garlic or small seedsé herbs – dill, peppercorn, etc so that you indeed get the same amount in each jar.
THis is very different than using a spice bag (essentially the spices wrapped in cheesecloth) to spice a brine and using the flavoured brine and throwing the bag out before jarring.
Let me know if any questions or if that makes sense; I should have prefaced it better
j