Brine should cover the tops of the cucumber pieces in the jars. Image Credit: gpointstudio/iStock/Getty Images

Start to Finish: 45 minutes Servings: 6 Difficulty Level: Beginner

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Refrigerating cucumbers in a seasoned brine yields homemade pickles that pack a lot of flavor and a hearty crunch. The ingredients you include in the brine determine whether you create kosher dill, sour, bread and butter, or sweet pickles. Thinly sliced cucumbers may develop the desired flavor after only a few hours of soaking in the brine. But thick pieces of cucumber or whole cucumber fruits may need to soak two or three days before they develop a robust pickle flavor.

Ingredients

• 1 pound pickling cucumbers such as Kirby cucumbers
• 1 to 2 cups water
• 1 tablespoon kosher salt
• 2 teaspoons mustard seeds
• 1/4 teaspoon celery seeds
• 3/4 teaspoon black peppercorns, optional
• 1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes, optional
• 1/2 teaspoon dill seeds, optional
• 1/4 cup chopped dill, optional
• 1 to 2 minced garlic cloves, optional
• 1 cup white wine vinegar or Champagne vinegar, optional
• 1/2 teaspoon turmeric, optional
• 1/3 cup granulated sugar, optional
• 1/4 teaspoon allspice, optional

Directions

Wash the cucumbers. Slice about 1/8 inch off the blossom end of each cucumber with a knife. The blossom harbors enzymes that can make a cucumber limp over time.

Slice the cucumbers into 1/8- to 1/4-inch-thick slices. You can cut thicker slices or spears, if desired. You can also leave smaller 2- to 3-inch cucumbers whole.

Pack the cucumber pieces into 2 pint-sized jars as tightly as you can without breaking or tearing the pieces. The volume of cucumber should be equal between the two jars. Leave about 1/2 inch head space between the cucumbers and the rims of the jars.

Bring 1 cup of water to a boil in a saucepan. Bring 2 cups of water to boil if you are preparing sour pickles.

Add kosher salt, mustard seeds and celery seeds to the saucepan to start a brine. Incorporate additional seasonings, depending on the type of pickles you are preparing. Add black peppercorns, red pepper flakes, dill seeds, chopped dill, minced garlic and vinegar if you are making kosher dill pickles. Add black peppercorns and red pepper flakes if you are making sour pickles. Add minced garlic to the mixture, if desired. Add black peppercorns, red pepper flakes, turmeric, minced garlic, vinegar and sugar if you are preparing bread and butter pickles. Add allspice, vinegar and sugar if you are preparing sweet pickles.

Stir the brine until the salt dissolves. Remove the brine from the heat.

Pour equal volumes of brine into each jar. Seal the jars with their lids.
Refrigerate dill, bread and butter, or sweet pickles overnight before taste testing them. It may take 2 to 3 days for the flavors to thoroughly saturate larger cucumber pieces. Ferment sour pickles at room temperature for 3 days before taste testing them. Continue fermenting them at room temperature until they are sufficiently sour. Transfer them to the refrigerator when they develop the desired flavor.

Refrigerate homemade pickles up to 1 month.

Substitution and Seasoning Tips

Substitute apple cider vinegar, distilled white vinegar or sherry vinegar, if desired.

Include other seasonings in your brine, as desired. For example, add 1 teaspoon of coriander seeds to kosher dill or bread and butter pickles. Bay leaves, cloves, ginger, mace, cardamom, cinnamon sticks, juniper berries and cumin are also included in some pickle recipes.

Substitute pickling spice for all of the seasonings, except for the dill and dill seeds in kosher dill pickles.

Food Safety and Storage Warnings

Clean your jars thoroughly before filling them with pickles and brine to prevent contamination. The most effective way to clean jars and lids is to wash them in a dishwasher set to the highest temperature settings. Leave them in the dishwasher until you are ready to fill the jars.

Prepare homemade pickles for long-term pantry storage by packing them in sterilized canning jars and processing them with a boiling water canner.

The vibrant pink color of dragon fruit simply demands one's attention. This beautiful and tasty fruit has been a popular ingredient at local smoothie shops for a while now, but now they're rapidly becoming more available at grocery stores. It's wonderfully flavorful and filled with health benefits, making this smoothie bowl recipe both an easy and enjoyable way to start off the day.

Final Image Credit: Kristan Raines

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Things You\’ll Need

• Blender

• ½ cup coconut water

• 1 cup cubed pitaya, frozen

• 1 small sliced banana, frozen

• ¼ cup pineapple pieces, frozen

• ¼ cup cubed mango, frozen

• 2 ½ tsp chia seeds (optional)

• 1 tsp maca (optional)

• Small bowl

• Toppings to garnish: coconut chips, dragon fruit, etc.

Step 1

Place all of the ingredients into the blender in the order listed.

Loading blender Image Credit: Kristan Raines

Step 2

Blend on high until creamy and thick.

Blend ingrediente Image Credit: Kristan Raines

Tip

You may have to stop your blender and scrape down the sides a few times during the blending process to help things blend properly.

Step 3

Once blended, add the thick smoothie to a small bowl and enjoy with your choice of toppings!

Finished bowl Image Credit: Kristan Raines

Tip

This recipe makes one smoothie bowl.

Things You\’ll Need

• Sharp knife

• Fan

• Bread

Cutting into onions releases an irritating vapor. Image Credit: Photos.com/Photos.com/Getty Images

Cutting into an onion with a knife releases enzymes in vapor form. When the vapor reaches your eyes, it turns into a form of sulfuric acid, causing irritation. The eyes then try to dilute the volatile gas with tears. To avoid crying as you prepare your recipes, you'll need to find effective ways to stop the vapor from reaching your eyes.

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Step 1

Chill your onions. Placing an onion in a very cold refrigerator or freezer until it's chilled will keep the enzymes from activating while you cut.

Step 2

Use a sharp knife. Dull knives damage more plant cells, leading to an increased amount of vapor being released into the air.

Step 3

Cut the onion under water. This will stop all irritating vapors because the gas, like any acid, will dissolve into water. You can also cut the onion under running water.

Step 4

Use ventilation. A fan generating an air current away from your eyes will blow away the tear gas.

Step 5

Place a piece of bread in your mouth so that half of it sticks out. This will help absorb the offending vapors.

Step 6

Combine different approaches for greater protection when cutting onions.

Warning

Use caution when handling sharp knives.

Acorns are the nuts that are grown on oak (Quercus) trees. There are more than 300 varieties of oak trees and all of them produce acorns that are harvested for eating in the fall. White oaks can produce anywhere from four bushels to nearly a ton of acorns every year. Red oaks produce these amounts every other year because their acorns need two growing seasons to fully mature.

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Red and White Oaks

Fresh acorns that haven't been processed are very bitter to eat because they still contain tannin. Some acorns have more tannin than others. Acorns that come from a red oak are rich in tannins and taste very bitter. They are not commonly used for eating because they require extra leaching. Acorns from white oaks contain fewer tannins, taste less bitter than acorns from red oaks, and are commonly processed for eating. To identify if an oak is a red or a white, examine the leaves. The leaves of the red oak have bristles at the tips of the leaves while the leaves of the white oak have no bristles and the leaf tip is slightly rounded.

Harvesting

Harvest acorns in the fall when they begin to fall from the trees. Pick them up from the ground each day or lay a tarp under the trees to capture the falling acorns. As you gather the acorns, inspect them and look for any holes or cracks in the shell. Discard any acorns that show damage to the shell.

Removing the Tannin

Before eating acorns, the nuts must be shelled and leached to remove the tannins. Crack open the shell of each acorn with a hammer or a nut cracker and remove the nut inside. Grind the nuts in a blender or put them in a plastic food bag and crush them with a mallet or rolling pin. Put the acorn meal in a large pot of boiling water. The water will turn dark as the tannin is released from the acorns. Remove the pot from the burner and let it cool until you are able to safely handle it. Pour out the dirty water and add fresh water to the pot. Bring the acorn meal to a boil again. Repeat this process of leaching out the tannin for a total of five times.

Acorn Flour

After the tannin has been leached from the acorn meal, the meal must be dried. Spread the meal on a baking sheet and dry it in the oven. Set the oven on its lowest temperature and keep the oven door open so that the moisture from the acorn meal can escape. Stir the acorn meal every 30 minutes until the meal appears dry, in four to eight hours. Acorn meal can also be dried in a food dehydrator. Spread the meal out on a fruit leather tray and set the drying temperature at 90 to 100 degrees Fahrenheit. It will take eight to 10 hours for the meal to dry in a dehydrator. Sun dried acorn meal is placed in a warm, sunny room and is covered with one layer of cheesecloth to prevent insects and dust from getting onto the meal. It can take one to two days until the meal is completely sun dried. Test the dried meal. If it is dry, you will feel no water content when your squeeze the meal between your fingers and the nut will be tender, not brittle. After the meal is dried, grind it into a coarse flour using a grain grinder. Store the flour in strong plastic food bags or in clean glass jars in the refrigerator or the freezer. Use within one month.

Using in Recipes

Acorn flour can be used in breads, cookies and cakes. You can also replace cornmeal with acorn flour in any recipe. In recipes that call for oats, replace half of the oats with acorn flour. In bread recipes, replace one-quarter of the wheat or bread flour with acorn flour.