Seatbelt ON

A quick post about pickles.

I think pickling cucumbers is probably the easiest thing when it comes to food preservation. Seriously, a few minutes and you've got a few jars of delicious dill spears or sweet bread and butter coins, If ever I give a class on canning and preserving, making pickles is most definitely the first thing I would teach.

But I digress.

One trick that Ive used for the last couple times is called seat belting. What the heck is seat belting? Well you know when your pickles float, even when you've packed them tighter than rats in a tunnel? Well seat belting is an effective way to make sure those suckers don't move an inch. And its so easy to do.

You simply pack in those spears as hard as you can, leaving no space, and wedge two spears in a crisscross way, tight enough to keep the rest of the pickles down, like a barrier. Thus appropriately named seat belt. Simple, and it makes your jars pretty enough to give as gifts, should the receiver be ridiculously prickly and snobby about floating pickles. Ta-da!