hi welcome to hoarder culture and homes
and thanks for joining me today I am
pickling okra and I have just about
everything ready to
go and the recipe I'm using is from the
ball Complete Book of Home preserving uh
if you can at all you should have this
book I mean it it's almost like your
right
hand uh so since this is a copy wred uh
recipe I will tell you that there is uh
water distilled
vinegar uh canning
salt and to add my canning salt and I'm
making a recipe and a half and it's okay
to double your recipes and things like
that when you're making a pickling
liquid uh some dill seed this is dry
dill I like this recipe uh quite a bit
so I don't change it up too much I've
tried numerous recipes
uh and this is uh something that my
daughter likes a lot and this is the
recipe she likes the best so that's the
one I stick with so I'm going to use uh
cloves of garlic and that's going to go
down in each jar some of these cloves
were very very large so I split them in
half the other thing uh the recipe calls
for fresh hot peppers and my hot peppers
are not that hot this year because of
all the rain that we've had so I'm going
to substitute uh some dried red pepper
I've done that many times before and
it's okay to to um you you know change
up your spices that your dry spices and
things like that you can't go messing
around with your pickling liquid as far
as your your ratios of
vinegar uh so and then with the
okra this is uh about the amount of okra
we get every day or two at the
farm and you want your okra to be uh
shorter than your pint canning
jar
and you're going to take this little
stem
off and the trick is when you make your
cut to um you actually cut the top off
but not cut it so deep that you cut into
the okra and cut a hole in into it and
it starts to to uh ooze and that sort of
thing so there's a little line here
between the cap and the top of the okra
and I like to cut it right there at that
point you can see there's no hole or
anything but still nice and solid
and you can tell when you cut into your
okra your top if it's a tough piece of
okra you can tell that when you're
running your knife through there and you
don't want those tough pieces you can
discard those so I have my okra now one
of the tricks that uh they don't tell
you uh that I learned from a canning
competition is to go ahead and take your
knife and Pierce some holes into your
okra and you have has air space inside
that okra pod and what happens when you
can uh cuz you're doing a cold pack with
your Oprah uh so what happens is you
have that air space and instead of the
liquid getting into that air space when
you uh actually cook and can the okra
the moisture is taken up and slowly
makes it its way into that ochra pot and
then your fluid amount in your jar is uh
on the low side so if you go ahead and
pierce your okra then um you can squish
that air out of the okra pods when
you're stuffing your jar cuz you're
going to stuff that jar pretty full uh
and expel most of that air and take care
of some of that um problem with your uh
moisture amount as far as the amount
that's in your jar when you're done at
the end of
canning so now all I have to do I have
all my ochre prepped and ready to
go and going to take my liquid and I
need to heat that to a simmer because I
want that Dill to start working in that
liquid um and then my hot pepper and my
garlic I add that to the jar uh at the
time when I go to process that now I
have my jars on um I don't recommend
putting your jars in the oven you can
use your dishwasher or um submerse them
in in hot water in your in your caner
and sterilize your jars that way so I'm
in the process of doing that and uh once
I get this heated and I'm ready to go
I'll be right
back okay I have my hot sterilized
jar and my okra is still raw I haven't
done anything with it
yet and I'm going to place my okra in
the jar I go along the edge of the jar I
put one upside down I put one right side
up put one upside down that one's kind
of
long one right side
up then in that's around the edge and
then in the center of the jar I put a
bunch of PODS down so they take up the
space in the
jar and
then I'll put a bunch of pods in right
side up I really put them in tight oh
forgot to put in my garlic so let's get
that in the bottom of the jar and my
piece of hot pepper that goes
in and the idea is to
pack the PODS of okra in here fairly
tight that'll help keep them from
floating try and work quick you don't
want your jar to cool off a great
deal if you can help
it okay I don't really see any Open
Spaces in the bottom of that jar so now
I'm going to put a bunch of these in
right side
up I'm going to tuck them in here fairly
tight okay that's pretty
good now I'm going to fill my jar with
my pickling liquid
I like to stir that up so I get plenty
of the dill seed in
there okay I'm going to fill that up
most of the way let going to take my
Chopstick and I you put the fat side
down cuz I want to kind of Squish that
ochre around and push some of that
air see if I can do this where you can
see it
As I push on this you can see the air
bubbles as
the and get rid of that
air and then those will fill up with the
pickling
liquid couple of them have popped up I'm
push those back
down oops
didn't mean to push quite that hard
okay we want to leave about a half an
inch of head
space that one's a little bit full so
let
me pour just a little bit off
I'm going to wipe my rim make sure
that's nice and
[Music]
clean and I come over and get my lid and
ring that's been getting
hot place that
on and then I'm going to pop this into
my caner I'll keep doing this until uh I
fill up on my
jars okay so here we are the next
day my Pickles Have cooled and I can
remove the uh ring from
the jar and then I'm just uh going to
label
them and place them on the shelf and
they'll be ready to
go then I'm going to put a
date
um and I did want to remark about the
hot pepper uh I did deced this hot
pepper I didn't want this brine to be
really
hot but um you know you can do what you
want I just wanted this to be a a
typical
pickle and uh so if you want it hotter
you can leave your seed um I did
not so and you can see that um placing
the okra in here right side up and
upside down kind of going every other
way um helps
me pack a fair bit of okra in the jar
this was really curly okra usually it's
uh longer and straighter but for some
reason this um that I picked a lot of it
was um crooked so it's not as pretty in
the jar AS it could
be but this is ready to go I'm going to
let it set at least a week before I
would open it uh or a couple weeks so
that uh it has time for the pickling
brine to get all through there and make
everything taste really good