Making Crunchy Canned Pickles

I'd rather have a slightly less crisp pickle than putting alum in my food.

I have a very simple easy way of making pickles. I buy Mrs. Wages pickle mix for whatever pickles you may want to make; kosher, dill, bread and butter, etc. I boil the mix to hottest temp then pour it over the pickles in the jar. I do notprocess these then in a water bath canner. The hot mix is enough to sterilize the pickles. Then I seal the lids and voila...I am done. VERY simple. I have never had mushy pickles or any that spoiled doing this.

My Great Aunt Mary always added 1/8 teaspoon of powdered alum to each quart before adding the liquid. She said that was the secret to keeping the pickles crunchy.

Make sure you use pickling salt and NOT just plain table salt.

I put alum in my pickles to make them crunchy. Also the recipe I use for pickles is 6 water and 2 vinegar 1/3 cup of salt and everybody likes them. I also use the recipe for hot peppers.

The trick is soaking them in coarse salt to draw out the water, for at least an hour. The salt will get rinsed off after. Try Martha Stweart's pickle chips: These are refrigerator pickles but can easily be canned.

http://www.marthastewart.com/portal ... 003d370a0aRCRD&vgnextfmt=default

Hi, place a clean grape leaf in jar with pickles, never tried it but I hear it works great. "Happy Pickling", :)

I always put them in ice and salt for at least a few hours then drain and cook - do not put too many batches in the same pot to cook - it takes too long for them to all get hot. I had one batch get mushy this way.

I never had a problem, as long as I used a recipe that called for soaking them in alum; a lot of 'old' recipes for pickles have this step. Good luck!

My mother made several different types of pickles for many years and never had any problems with them. I also used the same recipes and made pickles for many years and always had really good luck with them. I wonder if it depends on the recipe, because my former mother-in-law never made really good pickles, using her family recipes.