Pickling Yellow Wax Beans; Sweet and Spicy

My daughter was given pickled yellow wax beans at a friend’s grandparents place. Both girls absolutely loved them and devoured an entire jar in one sitting. I was asked to plant beans in the coming season to pickle. I’ve never pickled before and had enough beans from the garden to experiment with. Sadly, the beans were not prepared by said grandparents so I have no recipe. After some digging and researching in books and on line I decided to fuse a few recipes together.

Recipe for Four Pints

2 lbs yellow wax beans
2 1/2 cups white wine vinegar
2 1/2 cups water
1/8 cup sea salt
1 1/4 cups sugar
8 black pepper corns
4 cloves garlic; halved
4 dried chili peppers

Place pint canning jars (wide mouth are easier to fill) in a large pot, fill and cover with water, bring to a boil and simmer for 10 minutes to sterilize. In the meantime, prepare the beans by cleaning, discarding damaged beans, cutting off ends and removing strings if necessary. Remove jars from the water (I used kitchen tongs) and place upside down on a clean towel. Pour some of the boiling water to cover the lids and rings in a separate bowl.

Prepare the brine- bring vinegar, water, sugar and salt to a boil and then simmer until the sugar and salt has dissolved and the jars are packed.

Packing jars- Put 2 black peppercorns and 1 clove garlic (2 halves) into each jar. Pack each jar tightly with the beans (be sure there is 1/2 inch of headspace left in the jar) and 1 dried chili pepper. Pour the boiling brine into the packed jars leaving 1/2 inch of headspace. Wipe the edge of the jars, place the lids on (be sure to use new lids/do not reuse lids) and secure with rings.

(I’m not sure if I packed them tightly enough because the beans floated up. I guess I need to practice and do more research) Process the jars for 10 minutes by placing back into the hot water (you may need to remove some water that has been displaced by the now full jars), bringing to a boil and simmer for 10 minutes. The lids will “pop” when the jars cool signaling that they are sealed. The lids can be tested by pushing in the center, if they do not “pop” they are good to store. If they do not store in the refrigerator and all will be fine. Store jars at least 6 weeks before opening so that the flavors can fully develop.