Back on the pickled path

So I took an unplanned break from pickling over the holidays but now I'm back on track with some new jars and some new orders and a new website! More photos and info about my new website to come. You can now officially order on line just have to work out a bug or two before I go live. Totally psyched about that!
Tomorrow I get back to the business of Improsario-ing! See you all then!

New web site!

It's been a very busy month of Pickle Impresarioing. I have finally perfected my Hotties recipe! Serrano peppers are the key. I've sold quite a few jars a work. Now I'm just trying to find more cucumbers. I have a great connection from work who may be able to get me pickling cucumbers from Mexico this winter. In which case look out! We're gonna go nuts canning this holiday season.

I put up a new web site that I will activate as soon as I have enough jars in stock to meet my demand. Right now I'm taking orders by request only. You can still check out the site...

http://web.me.com/hattied/Pickles/Home.html

Labels!

So I have officially named and labeled the pickles and am proud to reveal the entire line!

Our Official Starting Line Up

Bloody Buddies

These are obviously the Hot ones

The Official Dill of the Imperial House!  Thanks Dehlia!

The Garlic Dills

More waiting

So we tasted a jar of the hot pickles today after one week of sitting. They aren't ready yet. As I suspected :). Three more weeks till they are ready for consumption.
...

First Big Batch

After an amazing tasting a couple of weeks ago I embarked on my first big batch of pickles.

Not only did we pickle cucumbers this time but we did Carrots, Asparagus, Okra, and Green Beans!

We are going to try a little experiment with this round and taste a jar after only a week to see if the flavor is there.  I still think it will take at least a month to get the full flavor but Tony wants to test it out so I'm willing to give it a try.  So today is the day for that.  More later about the early tasting!

Super Hot's have been the favorites so far so I did a big batch of just those.  I also made a jar of what I call "Stupid Hot" for Granzow.  Can't wait to see how those turn out!

All of the Veggies are Super Hot as well.  Tony thought that would go best with Bloody Mary's.  I agree.  I'm really hoping those turn out tasty.

We also used Calcium Chloride to make the pickles crispier this time.  I hope that helps.  Now it's off to taste our hard work!

Pickle Party!!!!

The Gang's all here!

First off I want to say a BIG "Thank You!!!" to all the friends who were able to make it over on Sunday to taste the fruits of my labor.  You guys are the best.  Special thanks to Dehlia who helped with the food and planning for the day :)

It was finally time to taste our first big batch of pickles so I invited all my closest friends over and we tasted them all.  Out first round was a phenomenal success.  I was pleased to find that this round tasted even better than the first.  Over all people really enjoyed the super Hot and Garlic flavors.  I think we solved the mystery of what makes a pickle crunchy as well.

I plan to make the next round the biggest yet.  We are going to keep the pickles in bigger slices to help with crispness.  We also discovered that the "super" version of everything was the best.  More flavor.  The whole pickles were the crispiest so I'm gonna do more of those.  We also want to start pickling green beans, asparagus, carrots and maybe some ocra and pearl onions for a line of Bloody Mary garnishes.

Another technique we want to try is letting the pickles sit for less time.  Some of the chefs we work with said they only let the pickles brine for 72 hours.  It would be really great if we could get the same amount of flavor in less time.  The great thing is the longer they sit the more flavor they have, so you can't really go wrong keeping them in the jar.

I've already had three people order pickles, so I think we're on to something here!   Lindsay asked for some Bread and Butter pickles.  I'm going to try to find a good recipe for those and make some in the next round.

Now that I've got a couple of good recipes under my belt it's time for Research and Marketing!  Gotta find out all the details about the local Farmer's Markets.  How to get a booth, how much it costs, etc.  I'm also going to make some labels for the jars.  Found a great website that will print custom labels for only $0.58!! That was cheaper than VistaPrint.

Pickles get more exciting each day!  Can't wait to get started on the next batch!

As you can see it was a long day :)

It's in the can...er, eh...JAR!

Ok we got this baby wrapped up.  Special thanks this round to my favorite assistant, Mr. Tony Donley!

Isn't he handsome?!

So our experiment went well.  We decided to do three varieties of pickles.  Hot, Garlic and Dill.  Then for each variety we did two catergories

Hot and Super Hot

These guys are gonna be freakin hot!  The Super Hots have chopped dry red chilies with the seeds, whole dry red chilies, halved jalapenos with the seeds, red pepper flakes and black peppercorn.  The Hots have a tamer version of the same ingredients.

Dry Red Chilies 

Dill and Super Dill

Fresh Dill

Now all of the varieties have dill in them, we just made these with dill as the main ingredient.  As part of the experiement the Super Dills have 12 sprigs of dill in them and and the regular Dill have 8 sprigs.  All of the other flavors have 4 sprigs of dill in with all the other ingredients.

Garlic and Super Garlic

The Super Garlics have 8 cloves of fresh garlic, chopped garlic from a jar and garlic salt.  The regular Garlic have 4 cloves and chopped garlic only.  All the other flavors have garlic in them as well, but only 2 cloves per jar.

All in all we ended up filling 9 jars.  We had enough cucumbers to fill two more jars, so I just kind of made something up for them.  We were out of fresh garlic so I used the chopped garlic, some celery seeds, and all the other spices.  We also added green onions and fresh green beans to each jar.

I also had one extra jar and no more pickles left so I decided to pickle an Heirloom Tomato.  I took out the stem and core and chopped it in 1/8.  Who knows how that one is going to turn out.

I'm super excited to taste them in a month!  The official jar opening will be on Friday September 17th!!!  Be there or be square!!!