Tag: pickles

Hot Garlic Dill Pickles Heat Up

Hot garlic dill pickles have become an obsession. I use the same tried-and-true recipe with minor variations at times.  This small personal batch has been slightly perverted with the addition of the powdered cayenne being introduced directly to the jar and not in the vinegar solution.  Also, I added ghost peppers, scorpion peppers, habanero, big hot chilies, and tabasco peppers to the jar in addition to the usual cayenne  pepper flakes.  I have said in the past that “you can’t really get them too hot..”, but in the case of this run, I may change that statement.

I carefully chose the nicest peppers out of my dried collection from the garden.  Most of these are for cooking only.  They are really too hot to eat alone.  However, in the case of this fresh pack pickle batch, they will be working in a “hybrid” culinary culture.  They won’t be eaten. They will be infused with the cucumbers along with the dill and garlic.

In a few days, I’ll cool these down in the fridge and try a few out.  I’m excited to see if they are going to be as hot as I suspect they’ll be. Holy Hell Batman!!

Thick Sliced Crinkle-Cut Hot Garlic Dill Pickles

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These thick crinkle-cut hot garlic dill pickles turned out great.  These are fresh from the field to the jar. Changes in the recipe explained briefly below also worked out great!  

Osage Farms in Dillard, Georgia is a real find.  When I first realized that the cucumbers they offered were authentically fresh from the field and that they had been picked within the hour, I knew I would have a top quality product to use for my hot garlic dill pickles.  Also offered along with the cucumbers were potatoes, various peppers (hot and mild), beets, peaches, cabbage, tomatoes (very wide variety), various squashes, tender ears of corn, okra, and soon apples.  All of their produce is top quality and fresh.

Recipe Changes

Since this last batch of pickles, prepared this past Saturday, was a fairly small batch of 12 quarts,  I ventured out in my recipe. This time around, I added a more generous portion of powdered cayenne along with a multi-fistful of dried hot chili peppers into the brine mix.  In the jars, to leave more room for pickles, I backed off on the amount of added flaked cayenne and dill.  I did add fresh dill weed sprigs to the jars along with fresh hot chili pepper rings, and whole dried cayenne peppers to the jars before I added the thick sliced, crinkle cut cucumber slices and covered them with the spicy brine. The pickles are not room temperature cured yet, so I have not tried them.  I hope they will be very good.

UPDATE: They are tastier and spicier than ever and the thicker slices make then crunchier.

The Osage Produce Stand is a wonder of fresh goodness in North Georgia close to the North Caroline state line on HWY 441.

The equivalency table I created for making various sized batch of pickles is a big help:

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2015 Big Batch of Hot Garlic Dills

This batch ended up as 36 quarts.  Here is the breakdown for the batch:

  • 40 pounds of fresh pickling cucumbers
  • Over 15 Quarts of Water
  • Over 25 Cups of Apple Cider Vinegar
  • Over 4 Cups of Salt
  • 2 – 1/4 Cups Dill Seed
  • 4 – 1/2 Cups Garlic Chips
  • 4 – 1/2 Cayenne Flakes
  • Fresh Dill Heads and Tabasco Peppers

Comments: The cucumbers were fresh and excellent in color, shape, and taste.  This seems to be a great year for produce in general. Since there was very little waste, I packed these as tightly as possible.
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ULTRA HOT Garlic Dills

I had some pickling solution leftover when making the regular batch of hot garlic dills along with some cucumbers. I located several more jars and decided to pump up the heat.  I added powdered cayenne to the pickling solution and added dried red hot chilies to the jar.  They are not too hot, but they are a bit spicier than the regular hot garlic dills.  The taste is still real good!