Thanksgiving break in 2008, Troy and I were with his parent's and his mom busted out a jar of homemade dilly beans that someone had given her. I had been puking my guts out for months at this point (I'm convinced the more you puke, the cuter the kid!), and had pretty much only eaten 2 Jamba Juices and some tator tots since July.
I took 1 bite of the dilly bean and realized that "hey, this is staying down"! I greedily ate pretty much the entire jar, not even giving my in-laws or Troy much of a chance. Later that night, I realized that had been a poor decision, but even with that as the end result, I still like myself a big ole' mess of dilly beans. I just eat a few less at a time now...
The Seattle weather has not cooperated with providing me with a bounty of green beans all at once. So rather than being able to can a huge batch and calling it good, I needed a recipe that would allow me to make small quantities and still get that same great dilly bean taste. I found that recipe at IntheGarden.
Super-easy and Fast Fridge Dilly Beans
~2 cups of green beans
1 cup vinegar
1 cup of water
2.5 tblsp of organic evaporated cane juice
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1.5 tsp of kosher salt
1/2 of an onion, sliced
2 sprigs of fresh dill
1/2 tsp of black peppercorns
1/2 tsp of red pepper flakes
1) Make your brine: In a saucepan, bring water, vinegar, salt, sugar, and garlic to a boil. Once it has boiled, set aside and allow it to come to room temperature.
2) Wash and trim the beans. Make sure they all fit length-wise in the jar that you're using.
3) Blanche the beans:
If I threw a party and invited everyone you knew. You would see the biggest gift would be my dilly beans, and the card attached would say "hey I made them for you".
Errr, I mean blanch your beans. Boil them for 1 minute, and then put in a bowl of ice water. We never have ice in our freezer, so I just use the coldest water I can. Drain the beans and set aside.
4) In your clean jars, place onions, peppercorns, dill, and red pepper flakes in the bottom.
5) Add your beans to the jars.
6) Pour the brine over the beans, and put them in the fridge. Allow them to sit in the fridge for 2 days before eating them (yeah, we broke that rule and started eating them the next morning).
As my green beans ripen in the garden, I blanch them and add them to the brine in the jars.
