Favorite recipe - way to make pickles? Fermenting, especially if you want dills. Have a big crock of these working right now. Alton Brown Fermented Dills Ingredients 5 1/2 ounces pickling salt, approximately 1/2 cup 1 gallon filtered water 3 pounds pickling cucumbers, 4 to 6-inches long 1 tablespoon black peppercorns 1 tablespoon red pepper flakes 2 cloves garlic, crushed 1 teaspoon dill seed (used 1 1/2) 1 large bunch dill (+1 tsp dillweed) Directions Combine the salt and water in a pitcher and stir until the salt has dissolved. Rinse the cucumbers thoroughly and snip off the blossom end stem. Set aside. Place the peppercorns, pepper flakes, garlic, dill seed and fresh dill into a 1-gallon crock. Add the cucumbers to the crock on top of the aromatics. Pour the brine mixture over the cucumbers in order to completely cover. Pour the remaining water into a 1-gallon ziptop plastic bag and seal. Place the bag on top of the pickles making sure that all of them are completely submerged in the brine. Set in a cool, dry place. Check the crock after 3 days. Fermentation has begun if you see bubbles rising to the top of the crock. After this, check the crock daily and skim off any scum that forms. If scum forms on the plastic bag, rinse it off and return to the top of the crock. The fermentation is complete when the pickles taste sour and the bubbles have stopped rising; this should take approximately 6 to 7 days. Once this happens, cover the crock loosely and place in the refrigerator for 3 days, skimming daily or as needed. Store for up to 2 months in the refrigerator, skimming as needed. If the pickles should become soft or begin to take on an off odor, this is a sign of spoilage and they should be discarded. Read more at: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/dill-pickles-recipe.html?oc=linkback Dave

kayskats - Yes, the "police" do show up at farmer's markets and farm stands, the state Dept of Ag can show up anytime (and have for several other vendors) to do a "surprise" inspection at your home kitchen, and yes, I do have to show my certification before I can sell at my quite small market (less than 30 vendors on any Saturday). The state also shows up to ensure that weighing scales have been calibrated within the last year, but that is another story. If you are caught selling BWB canned acidified foods when you do not have the cert. or are selling other stuff you shouldn't be (low acid, pressure canned, refrigerated, etc.), the Dept of Ag and the FDA could inflict very severe penalties on you and your market. We homegrown sellers have to follow pretty much what the rules are for commercial operations. One size fits all, US wide, but some states have lesser rules for farm stands and farmer's markets than my state does. Best to check with your Cooperative Extension office in your county and if they don't know, go on to your State Dept. of Ag. One comment one of my co-student's made was that if he didn't know what the rules were he would be safe from penalties. I don't think I'd buy anything from him, would you? Yes, please ask the sellers HOW their stuff was processed and if their kitchen was inspected, etc. We are consumers and should protect ourselves from bad stuff we might ingest. I even walk out of restaurants with a food grade less than "A". ksrogers - I think dry cured meats are regulated by another mega agency, the USDA. One of the vendors at my market raises cattle and hogs for cuts of meat he sells. He threw up his hands at the regs for slaughtering, curing, and/or freezing and now has a co-packer do it for him and THEY have to handle the USDA inspections and process filings which are really intense. >>I wouldn't go so far as to say that cured meat has no safety issues, because they do!Yes, I know, I make regular strawberry jam that is heated, but sadly it is not nearly as tasty as freezer jam. Horseradish, a low acid food, is not exactly stable and the pH acidification cannot be measured outside a food science lab according to my instructor, and that is why I can't sell it. It is not heated or pasteurized to eliminate bacterias, molds, and toxins, and "sealing" only means screwing on the cap. Refrigeration and acidification keep it stable and unable to grow the bad stuff because of refrigeration. That is also why it is sold refrigerated and you are admonished on the label to keep it refrigerated after opening. Commercial processors ship in refrigerated trucks from refrigerated manufacturing and storage facilities, and they go directly to the refrigerated section of the grocery store. That is something that can't be duplicated in a home processing environment or at an open-air market. Also, adding more vinegar doesn't necessarily make it safer because we can't measure the pH of the horseradish's vegetable interior at home, and with pH meters and test strips all we are doing is measuring the vinegar's pH. BTW - shelf stable jams and jellies are exempt from these regs because they have low water activity and a low pH. Since they are also packed at high temperatures, they are not likely to harbor harmful food borne illness organisms. Molds are the most likely bad thing to form but that is usually from not having sterilized the jars or not heating the lids enough (or, dirty hands packing them, airborne dust in a room with a fan, using overly ripe or moldy fruit, etc. etc.). I can sell as many variations of jelly and jam as I want at market. Without a cert. but with a kitchen inspection. Nancy

I wouldn't be surprised if Ball and Bernardin switch to ClearJel in the next edition. However, the current Ball Blue Book (2005) and the current Bernardin Guide to Home Preserving (mine is 2003) both offer mustard pickle recipes thickened with flour. Nobody is more stringent in their testing, so it appears flour is perfectly OK to use. The Marrow 'n' Onion Mustard Pickles in the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving uses ClearJel, so that's also a fine choice. To answer your other question, you can replace the cauliflower, the onions, the peppers with different vegetables or you can shift things around, i.e. increase the cucumbers, decrease the cauliflower. Just make sure the total amount of low-acid veggies remains the same as in the original recipe. Don't mess with the green tomatoes. They're high-acid and important to the safety of the pickle. Carol

This is all just semantics. Don't get so hung up on labels and terms as it only confuses the issue. Canning isn't a world of purists when it comes to labels. In the case of pickle recipes they are just cucumbers fermenting/soaking/sitting in some sort of liquid with various ingredients. There are "brines" made of just salt and water, there are "brines" made of water and vinegar, and there are "brines" made of all three plus all sorts of spices and herbs. I've seen recipes calling for brining the cukes for up to 24 hours in salt water (no vinegar) and then draining, That isn't "brined" just pre-soaking to draw water out of the cukes. Sure you may never have seen many "brined" pickles recipes - recipes where cucumbers are soaked in a cool environment for days or even weeks or months in a mixed brine of vinegar, salt, and water. But they do exist, lots of them. Old country store barrel pickles are a good example. The old giant jar of pickles on the deli counter is another. Many of the old "brined pickle" recipes are no longer considered safe due to listeria research but they still exist. Some of them evolved into what are now called "refrigerator pickles", some of them became what are now called "quick-pack" pickles, and some of them went more to the "fermentation" method with higher levels of salt and none or only a tablespoon or so of vinegar to slow (it doesn't stop) bacteria development. Dave