Let the canning season begin - Honey Dill Carrots

I rode my bike today to work and rode it to the garden on the way home - I always pretend I'm in Rome or Paris, as I bike home in my skirt and my saddle bags bursting with vegetables. 

The stop at the garden was only to pick enough carrots to make enough to can.  My mother gave me this recipe last summer and I don't remember from where it came - one of her books on preserving.

Honey Dill Carrots

1 lb small carrots

1 cup white wine vinegar

1 cup water

2 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons honey

2 teaspoons of pickling salt

1/4 tsp pepper

4 sprigs fresh dill

Scrub carrots.  Blanch in boiling water for 2 min and drain well.

Combine vinegar, water, honey, salt and pepper in a nonreactive sourcepan and boil until honey has dissolved

Evenly divide carrots into hot clean jars, wedging carrots in and stacking some upside down.  Fill jars with hot liquid, leaving 1/2 inch of headspace.  Add 2 sprigs of Dill.

Process for 30 min in a boiling water bath.

Let sit for 2 weeks.

I have a canner so to prepare the jars:  wash pint jars (this recipe makes 2 with some leftover for another jar to just keep in the fridge).  Put the jars in the canner and fill with water.  Bring to a boil, then put on simmer level until jars are ready to process.  Take jars out of the boiling water in order to fill.  Put the tops and rings into hot water until ready to use.  There are a lot of sites that will outline the canning process but this is just the basic.

Carrots, ready for blanching

Canner with water and jars inside

Carrots done blanching, rinsed with cold water (it's steam that is clouding the picture)

Carrots in jar with dill, being filled with vinegar mixture

All done processing