Making 10kg of USA-style Dill Pickles as they are not sold in Finland and my wife and I like them a lot. Some of the jars even have a fresh, self-grown chili pepper included for attitude adjustment.
These lids have a hard sponge-ring seal and work so that you fill up the jar with liquid to about 1cm from the top, screw on the lid with moderate strength (too tight and you corrupt the seal, too loose and it lets water in), submerge the entire jar under lukewarm water, bring to a boil until the cukes change color from bright to dull green, remove to a cooling rack and the vacuum lids will pop down as the jars cool. They will keep their vacuum seal for a year or more when stored in a cool, dark cabinet.
This batch of 10 large jars and 4 medium jars is half of what will be made. We'll finish the second half tomorrow, mostly spears and some slices. I don't have any more large jars so we will probably wind up with about 18 more of the medium jars. That'll be enough to last us a little more than 1 year.
The trick to making crunchy pickles that actually stay crunchy for a whole year is to soak them overnight in the fridge in a bath of cold water. It turns semi-soft cucumbers into really firm, almost hard cucumbers. I made 4 of these huge arcoroc bowls full of cukes, two yesterday and two more going now which we will pickle tomorrow.
