August 23, 2015

Bean salad


If you read my post yesterday, you saw that I was feeling a little overwhelmed by the quantity of beans I've been harvesting and exhausted with making dilly beans. This morning I looked around at some recipes online and in my cookbooks. I decided to make my own version of the pickled three bean salad in the ball blue book of canning.  I took their general idea, minus the celery which I didn't have, switching honey for sugar, and altering the quantities of ingredients some based on what I had available and flavors I prefer...

I mixed the 5 lbs of trimmed assorted beans from the garden with a diced onion and 7 small sweet peppers from the garden.  All of that went in the pot (above) with water. I boiled it about 10 minutes then drained the veggies. 

Meanwhile I made a brine of 8 cups of cider vinegar, 4.5 cups of water, 3 tablespoons of salt, 2.5 teaspoons of celery seed, 2.5 tablespoons of mustard seed and 2.5 cups of honey. I brought this to a boil for a few minutes to blend the flavors.

Finally I packed the jars with the veggies and filled with brine, leaving about 1/2" headspace.  They are in the hot water bath now, processing 15 minutes. This quantity made 5.5 quart jars. 

They look so pretty!  I can't wait to serve them at our next BBQ. They'll make a lovely side dish. 


3 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. Thank you! It was quite good, even a little sweet. I also made another version that has more of the dill flavor.

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