Introduction

I have decided to make fermented dilly beans. These are pretty much pickled green beans. The reason I am doing this is because I have actually tried to make these before, in the food microbiology class I took at UVM a few years ago, but ended up missing the day where we got to taste them and find out how they turned out so I have no idea if I was successful of not. I have been meaning to make them again ever since, and this seemed like the best opportunity. 

This is the recipe I will be using:

Ingredients

• 4 cups of fresh, organic green beans
• 3 cloves of garlic (peeled and halved)
• 1 TBS dill seed or 2-3 fresh dill heads if you can find them
• 2-3 cups sea salt and water brine - (6 TBS fine sea salt or 9 TBS course sea salt to 8 cups of water)

Instructions

1. Snap the ends off of the green beans.
2. Place garlic and dill in jar.
3. Fill with green beans, upright in jar and leave at least 1 inch of headspace. Be sure to pack in tightly but not so tight that they break.
4. Cover with brine to 1 inch from the top of jar.
5. Lid and let sit on a countertop for at least 3 days. Check to see if they have reached their desired level of sourness for you. If yes, refrigerate. If no, leave on counter until they have - usually best after 1-2 weeks

I got this recipe from http://realfoodoutlaws.com/lacto-fermented-dilly-green-beans/ 

I noticed that there was no jarring instructions in this recipe, it only calls for you to turn the lid of the container, not boil the jar and put the lid on creating an air-tight environment. This seemed odd to me, maybe because when I did this in class before we did boil the jars. What I have decided to do is do 2 jars at a time, one that has been boiled and one that is just room temperature and clean and simply has the top screwed on. I wanted to see if the jarring method would make two similar or very different products.