Definitely one of the worst search features ever. Sorry, but I couldn't even find it with Wayback Machine. Link below might contain recipe that is close.

Linda Lou's recipe might help.

Here is a link that might be useful: Almost found it...

Getting closer....

Here is a link that might be useful: It's probably in here someplace

Here it is on allrecipes, but read the comments because allrecipes.com changed the recipe. I remember Chase had posted on the CF that they changed her recipe without telling her.

Annie sent me a jar of the dills. They are so good!

Here is a link that might be useful: Chase's Dill Pickles

I am sorry, but the recipe does not have nearly enough vinegar to prevent botulism. Cucumbers are low acid vegetables and need the acid level high enough to be able to be canned. You need at least half of the brine to be 5 % acidity vinegar to water ratio.
Those old recipes were based on vinegar that was up to 40% acidity. I see that recipe is 25 years old.

I agree with Linda Lou. Recipes today use 5% vinegar, which is quite different from the vinegars commonly used years ago. A lot of these old recipes (my family has one similar) go back at least to the 30's and 40's.

Even BWB, with that ratio of vinegar to water, safety could not be assured. You could do it, I suppose, as a refrigerated pickle or perhaps search out a stronger vinegar. I know Ken uses one at 20%, but I don't know how that would affect flavor.

Carol

Most of my picking is done with straight vinegar, even if the recipe calls for water to be mixed in. I don't feel that its safe enough without the full 5% strength and the necessary salt. Some might say thats too strong, but if your wanting a crisper pickle, and BWB process it for too long, you can't help but to get a jar of mush. My BWB is a shorter length of time, so I feel that when a 5% vinegar brine is used, and not diluted with added water, it has to be a bit safer than a recipe that has a 50% vinegar water ratio. The 20% is actually diluted down. I have to facto in that if I recipe calls for a cup of vinegar (5% type), I can actaully use a 1/4 cup of the 20% vinegar and have the same acidity, with less liquid. The 20% is way too strong on its own to be used straight out of the bottle with no other liquids that would dilute it some. Even today, most commercial mustard and pickle manufacturers use a 20% vinegar as its easier to transport andcan be adjusted to any percentage the recipe needs to be at. A 20% vinegar on its own is nearly undrinkable. A 40% vinegar would burn your mouth and digestion

I found the recipe and changed the ratio to 6 cups of 5% vinegar to 10 cups of water for every 8 lbs of cukes (and 2/3 cup canning salt). Annie helped me figure this out, as she uses this recipe for her dills. Thanks for helping find the recipe!

You still don't have nearly enough vinegar to be safe to process them. You would need equal amounts water and vinegar. Guess only you can decide if you want to take the chance.

See, Kathy, I told you you needed a 50/50 water to vinegar ratio according to the USDA. (grin) That's still too sour for me, so I won't eat them if I make them 50/50, let alone with all vinegar. It's a good thing I like sweet pickles better than dills, I think sour pickles are just....well...icky.

Annie

If they are too sour the recommended thing to do is add a little sugar to cut the acid taste. That is what I do to mine.
You could also use some bottled lemon juice, someplace I have a new book with a recipe that has it in there along with some vinegar. At least that is what I think I read.
I would have to do some searching. Bottled lemon juice won't taste as tart as the vinegar.

Linda Lou, have you tried the Splenda in the pickles? I bet if you added just a single cup ot Splenda to a batch of vinegar based pickles, it would bring up the sweeteness to equal about 3-4 POUNDS of sugar! Annie is a wimp when it comes to sour pickles, we all know that for sure.. Imagine if they were sour pickles like the old days where it was just full strength 7% vinegar, salt and ALUM for the pucker, plus a dash of tumeric for the yellow color. Now THATS a SOUR pickle!! I have been making all my sweet mixed using the Splenda and have found that it can give me as much sweeteness compared to sugar, and I need very little Splenda to reach the same sweeteness level. It has something to do with the vineger. Splenda and Vinegar seem to make Splenda a super sweetener, compared to using lots more sugar. When I make a sweet mixed pickle, I also use some cider vinegar as it seems to have a more 'mellow' flavor, and less of the vinegary taste. Right now, I have dill sprouting up EVERYWHERE in my yard right now. Its from all the seed heads I didn't pluck before the seeds dropped off last summer.

To recap:
gardengirl and Annie worked out 6/10 cup (38/62%)
Linda Lou and Carol want 50/50%
ksrogers wants 100% vinegar

I've looked and looked and found a somewhat similar reciped on NCHFP that called for 43/57%. I've seen 50/50 in BBB. I'm an old newspaper reporter and would certainly like to read the research on the 100 percent. It may be right and I'd really like to know.

The other thing is:

Chase's original recipe was NOT BWB processed according to her note on the All Recipes site:
"SUBMITTED BY: SHARON HOWARD
This is my recipe and it has recently been changed by the All Recipes site. I do not use a water bath, that's what causes them to lose their crispness. I think All Recipes added that step when they chose this recipe as one of the top ten recipes. I imagine they added it to comply with USDA recomendations. I have emailed All Recipes asking that they either change back to the original recipe or remove my name."

Making my great old recipes safe gets harder and harder the more I try to dig up information.

Not that my opinion counts for anything, but I'd take Chase's recipe up to the jarred stage and go buy a second refrigerator and fill her up.

That's waht I did! Actually I don't think I used Chase's recipe, but I've gone to strictly refrigerated dills to eliminate the processing! Yum!!! They are still good at one year! So far I haven't had any last longer than that.....................

Deanna

Rule-of-Thumb currently is 50-50 vinegar and water as the minimum, but sigh, there are always exceptions. The NCHFP site has that Quick Fresh-Pack Dill that calls for 1 1/2 quarts vinegar to 2 quarts water. However, that's a lab-tested recipe so it can be made with confidence.

If you take a look at that recipe it gives another option for canning: low-temp pasteurization, which is more troublesome, but for those recipes that call for it, it is a good compromise. Low-temperature pasteurization offers the safety and convenience of bottling and room-temperature storage but greater crispness than the standard BWB.

As Ken mentioned, apple cider vinegar tends to have a more mellow flavor. It will be darker in the jar, but rural cooks traditionally have favored apple cider for its flavor. It's especially good in sweets.

A lot of pickle recipes do use 100% vinegar, but generally they're the sweet pickles, not dills.

We all have those much-loved old recipes. It can be a challenge to find ways to adapt them. Sometimes people just ignore current practice and make them anyway. It's a purely personal choice; there's certainly been lots of discussion on this Forum regarding the issue.

At least it you're a journalist you're aware that the argument "I've been making them for years and no one's died yet" doesn't hold water.

Carol

Here is a link that might be useful: Quick Fresh-Pack Dills

I know that there is the one recipe that seems to be the exception. Next month we are having someone here from USDA and from the University of Georgia to answer our questions and provide us with any new updates, etc.
I will try to remember to ask why this exception to the 50/50 standard requirement for safety.
The low temp. processing is a pain in my opinion as you have to keep constant check on it with a thermometer.
I never have soft pickles with regular processing.

Linda Lou I suspect I like a much crisper pickle than you ... I do not even like most commercial pickles -- mostly because of the texture. Clausen's refrigerated has the texture, but not the taste. And please do not even offer me a Bread and Buttter, home or commercial.

I've never tried the low-temp method and probably will not.. seems it offers a multitude of opportunities for screw up and they'd probably still fail my crispness test.

Please try to get whatever info you can from the USDA/UGA folks.

Carol, years ago when I started BWB some of the old family open kettle recipes, my aunt used the "haven't killed anyone yet" argument on me. Much as I loved her, I ignored her.
I'm familiar with the link you sent .. it's the one I calculated at 43/57 (hope my math was right). But don't think I'll be using it -- don't think they'll be crisp enough :)

I've gone pretty much to refrigerator/freezer recipes and still use the 50/50 "rule of thumb" for the sour ones. In fact I had upped the vinegar ratio in a couple I picked up on the internet.

I am still struggling with my relish recipes ... (more questions later, probably). I get so confused when trying to compare pounds, cups, or pieces of fruit or veggie... I've even got a couple using pecks, which few people recognize --- even at my farmer's market.

Kay

kayskats, Chase's recipe was not BWB'd because she's from Canada and their guidelines don't require a BWB for pickles. I did note that allrecipes changed the recipe to call for a BWB.

I tried that recipe using 50/50 vinegar and water and still thought it too "sour" for my taste. I did inform Kathy that the "rules" in the United States called for a 50/50 vinegar to water ratio minimum.

Because I don't really like dill pickles, I only made a batch for Dad last year. He insisted that I not BWB bath them and so I didn't, although I told him about the USDA guidelines. He didn't care and at 75 I'm not going to argue with him, it only ticks him off and doesn't get me anywhere.

At any rate, I make lousy pickles, even with Pickle Crisp mine are soft and mushy. Those I made for Dad were nice and crispy, though, the only batch of crisp dill pickles I've ever made.

Annie

The last two years I made pickled pepperoncini in pints and quarts, I pierced each pepper, and place them in alarge air tight container with a 100% vinegar and salt brine. I pull a vacuum on them, and allow this to pull the air out of the peppers and get displaced by the vinegar. After that, I fill the jars with the peppers and add fresh brine to each, pull another vacuum and they get sealed immediatly, once the vacuum is removed. There was no heat used in any of the process. The two year old batch is a little soft right now, but last years batch is a bit crisper. I tried doing these delicate thin skinned peppers using a boiling brine and a BWB process, but they turn to mush immediately. Because I use the full strenth 5% vinegar and pickling salt, these peppers I now make under vacuum have been keeping most of their crispness. I feel that the are as safe as I can expect due to use of the full strength vinegar. I wouldn't attempt this vacuum process with any other kind of vegetable however, as most others have much more density.

Annie, did you refrigerate the pickles you made for your Dad? Your Dad isn't that much older than me ... is he by any chance Scots? I am -- and as stubborn as they come. That doesn't, however, stand in the way of learning something new, especially when canning. Of course, your dad won't listen to you -- listening to your kids is not the way it works.
ksrogers: I'm not familar with "pulling a vacuum" ... can you point me in the right direction so I can read up on it. (Maybe I'm not as stubborn as I claim.) You don't refrigerate them?

Pulling a vacuum requires a strong vacuum pump. Not the same as a vacuum cleaner vacuum! I originally used a Food Saver machine that has a small vacuum pump inside. I attach a special device (made by Food Saver) that has a plastic hose on it, to the top of canning jars. There is a rubber seal in this device and it is held in position over the glass bead near the opening of the jars. A canning lid is placed on the inside the of adapter, where its held in place, partially open. Currently, I use a larger, more powerful vacuum pump and have a moisture trap on it as well. I switch on the pump while the lid and adapter is in place, and it pulls a vacuum on the contents of the canning jar. Sometimes a little of the brine can be sucked out of the jar and into the hose. Because I now have a trap there, the corrosive brine cannot enter the pump works. Once the dial gauge (also attached to the vacuum) show 30 inches of vacuum, I pull the hose off the adapter. Because of the sudden rush of air, immediately the lid gets pulled onto the jar and seals. I simply rinse off the jar afterwards, screw on a meteal ring and it just goes into regular storage in my cool basement. Food Saver advised that this practice is not suitable for home canning. But because I use a higher vacuum source, and full strength vinegar, I have never seen or had a single jar of my pepperoncini go bad during storage.

kayskats, Dad isn't Scots, he's Irish and Native American, but still stubborn. So am I, but even I know there's no use arguing with him.

He's not adverse to learning new canning techniques as long as they don't impair the quality of the product he's wanting to consume, LOL. Since my water bathed pickles are ALWAYS soft, he doesn't like them. He also doesn't like them really sour, they don't taste "right".

I have convinced him to stop open kettle processing tomatoes, though, so I'm making some headway.

Annie

I'm sure Linda Lou is a very nice and well meaning lady, but follow her advice on vinigar in your pickles and I'll save you some time. Just throw the cucumbers away and save the effort making the pickles. I've made a lot of pickles and I never tasted anything so awful as what the outcome was following her advice.
Sorry Linda but I hate to see people going to all the work and having those results.
Ken

Hmmm, my pickles are really good ! I am sorry yours are not good, but I have no idea why they aren't. I use this recipe and taste really good. Not too salty, not too tart. Any less vinegar and they are not safe to process. They do need at least half vinegar to water ratio to insure safety since they are low acid vegetables.
KOSHER DILL PICKLES (HEINZ RECIPE)

4 lbs pickling cukes
14 cloves garlic, peeled & split
1/4 cup salt
2 3/4 cups distilled or apple cider vinegar 5% acidity
2 3/4 cups water
12 to 14 sprigs fresh dill weed
28 peppercorns

Wash cucumbers; remove 1/16 inch from blossom end, cut in half lengthwise.

Combine garlic and next 3 ingredients; heat to boiling.

Remove garlic and place 4 halves into each clean jar, then pack cucumbers, adding 2 sprigs of dill and 4 peppercorns.

Pour hot vinegar solution over cucumbers to within 1/2 inch of top. Immediately adjust covers as jar manufacturer directs.

Process 10 minutes in boiling water bath.

Makes 6-7 pints

This is the recipe my family has been using for gosh knows how many decades.

The key I think is to use freshly picked cucumbers, straight to the ice bath. And fresh dill as well, of course.

I like it because it is easy to scale from 6 down to 1 quart, or anything between.

Looks similar to Chase's, except 2/1 ratio on water/vinegar.

* Exported from MasterCook *

Brad's Garlic Dill Pickles

Recipe By : Brad Lucht
Serving Size : 6 Preparation Time :1:00
Categories : Canning

Amount Measure Ingredient -- Preparation Method
-------- ------------ --------------------------------
24 pickling cucumbers -- * see note
12 cups water
6 cups white vinegar
1 cup pickling salt -- rounded
12 heads fresh dill
12 cloves garlic -- cut in half

This recipe will make 6-8 quarts, depending upon size of cucumbers. If
more than 6 quarts, increase amount of dill and garlic required.

Wash cucumbers and remove 1/16-inch from blossom end. Place in a 5-gallon
bucket with cold water and lots of ice cubes. Soak in ice water for at
least 4 hours but no more than 8 hours. Refresh ice as required.

Fill enamel canner with water and bring to a gentle boil; this will take
at least an hour. Boil canning jars in canner. Process lids in simmering
water for at least 10 minutes. Do not boil lids, as this will compromise
the rubber seal. All we want to do is soften the seal.

Combine water, vinegar and pickling salt in a large stock pot. Cover and
bring to a boil over high heat. This will take 20-30 minutes. Make sure
pot is covered so that solution does not evaporate.

When mixture has come to a boil, remove a jar from the boiling water,
making sure all water has drained from the jar. Place 2 half-cloves of
garlic and 1 head of dill in the jar. Add 3-4 cucumbers, leaving 1-inch
headspace. Top with an additional 2 half-cloves of garlic and another head
of dill.

Using a canning funnel, fill the jar with hot vinegar mixture, leaving
½-inch headspace. If necessary, wipe jar top and threads clean. Place hot
lid on jar and screw on ring a little more than finger tight.

Place jar on rack to cool. You should hear the "ping" of the seal within a
couple minutes. Repeat with remaining ingredients.

After jars have cooled, test seals. Write date of canning on lid using
Sharpie. Store in cool, dark place for at least 6-8 weeks. Refrigerate
after opening. Pickles will keep for up to 2 years if stored in a cool dry
place.

This recipe will give a much crisper pickle than those processed with a
hot water bath for 15-30 minutes.

[Scale recipe as needed. 1/6 cup canning salt = 8 tsp]

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

NOTES : *about 4 inches long