Spicy Garlic Habanero Dill Pickles

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Since I love pickles and everybody in my family loves pickles, I’m always making batch after batch in the canner all summer while my cucumber plants are producing. I make sweet pickles, savory pickles, pickle spears, pickle chips, and sometimes whole pickles and pickle relish. We’ll put up 60 jars of home-canned pickles or pickle-related things in a lazy year. Clearly, we’re pickle-obsessed people.

While all pickles are great, these Garlic Habanero Dill Pickles are up there among my most requested. The recipe, which is adapted from the Ball Blue Book’s brined Dill Pickle recipe, takes everything you like about a classic, savory dill pickle and turns up the flavor and the heat.  

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How Hot are Garlic Habanero Dill Pickles?

Don’t be afraid of this recipe, if you’re not a fan of questionably spicy food. While habaneros are known for being a low-end superhot pepper (much hotter than jalapeño, serrano, and cayenne peppers, but not as hot as ghost or scorpion peppers), the pickle brine and the canning process tones them down a lot. They give the pickles a pleasant kick at the end of the bite. It’s not an intense heat that keeps burning your mouth and makes you want to drink half a gallon of milk.

Ultimately, if you follow the amounts listed in the recipe, these pickles pack less heat than your average mild pickled jalapeños from the grocery store. You can always increase the heat by adding extra habaneros, if that’s how you roll.

It’s important to note that you might have a different experience with heat levels, if you choose to make fridge pickles with this recipe instead of processing them in a water bath canner. The processing plays a big part in toning down that heat. Refrigerator-pickled peppers retain a lot more of their kick than canned ones!

Equipment for Canning Pickles

Water Bath Canner

Dedicated water bath canners come with a rack for your jars. In lieu of a canner, a large stockpot will work. It should be wide enough to hold 7 pint jars and deep enough to cover them with at least an inch of boiling water. If you don’t have a rack, you can simply line the bottom of the pot with a small washcloth. The ideas is to have a buffer so the jars aren’t in direct contact with the bottom of the pot, which can cause cracking.

Large Pot for Brine

Stainless steel or glass is best for vinegar-based brines, since it might corrode lower-quality metals.  

Canning Jars

For this recipe, you’ll need 7 pint canning jars. Make sure to use jars intended for canning (not your recycled grocery store pickle jars, or anything like that).

Canning Bands and Flats

I’m not too picky about bands (you can reuse the same ones), but I prefer the Superb canning flats (lids) these days. I started having an increase in failed seals with other brands, but I’ve yet to have a single Superb flat fail to seal.   

Canning Tools

I recommend a canning tool set like this one for anyone who wants to get into home canning. To get started, you’ll at least need a funnel for ladling brine into the jars and a jar lifter for moving them in and out of the canner. A good complete canning tool set comes with some extra helpful gadgets to make your life easier, including a magnetic lid lifter, a tool for measuring headspace, and a silicone de-bubbler.

Ingredients for Garlic Habanero Dill Pickles

Cucumbers

Pickling cucumbers will make for the best home-canned pickles, but you can use any type of cucumber as long as they’re picked small (oversized cucumbers get spongey and full of seeds in the middle, which will lead to mushy pickles).

To make shelf stable pickles that taste good and keep their crunch, it’s also SUPER important to use cucumbers that are extra fresh. They should feel completely firm to the touch, and they shouldn’t flex if you try to bend them. I’d say cucumbers that aren’t crisp enough is the number one reason home-canned pickles turn out mushy.

Sometimes, it’s hard to find grocery store cucumbers that are anywhere close to fresh off the vine. The best way to get the freshest pickling cucumbers is to grow your own, which is easy!    

Check out my pickle-making tips post for more on how to properly harvest and store cucumbers to keep them in top pickling quality, along with other good practices to get crunchy, delicious pickles and prevent common pickling mishaps:

Water Bath Canning Pickles: 12 Tips for Crunchy Pickles That Never Disappoint.

Whole Garlic Cloves

Lightly-crushed garlic cloves in each jar add a lot of flavor. Try to find fresh garlic that hasn’t started to sprout, if possible. Older garlic sometimes turns bright blue when pickled! Blue garlic won’t hurt anything, but you might get some questions if you plan to give your pickles as gifts.

Habanero Peppers

I prefer habaneros for this recipe because of their distinct floral flavor, along with the fact that they retain a little bit of heat through the pickling process. Other types of hot peppers, such as cayenne, scotch bonnet, or tabasco, would work comparably. Milder peppers, such as jalapeños, won’t add much flavor unless you really increase the amount.

Vinegar

You can either use white vinegar or apple cider vinegar for your pickle brine. I prefer to use a 50/50 blend of both. This tones down the “whang” of the white vinegar a bit while preventing an overwhelming apple cider flavor. Make sure your vinegar says 5% acidity on the label (most ACV and white vinegar from the food section will).

Pickling Salt

Pickling salt is different from regular salt because it’s non-iodized and doesn’t contain anti-caking agents (both of which can negatively affect the quality of your pickles). You’ll find it at pretty much any grocery store, either in the spice aisle or the aisle with the canning supplies.  

Sugar

A little sugar takes the edge off the salt and vinegar in the brine for a smoother flavor. While Ball’s dill pickle recipe calls for ¾ cup sugar, I’ve reduced the amount to ¼ cup for this recipe. I’m a savory girl, and the whole ¾ cup makes the pickles taste too sweet for me. Since it’s the vinegar that preserves the pickles safely in this recipe, you can experiment with different amounts of sugar to see what you prefer (just keep the vinegar to water ratio the same).

Pickling Spices

Ball’s official pickling spice recipe contains a laundry list of ingredients, some of which are a bit hard to find. I prefer to simplify it a bit for this recipe, since we’ve already got a lot of flavor going on with the garlic and peppers. To spice up my pickles, I use:

-Fresh Dill or Dill Seed

-Mustard Seed

-Whole Black Peppercorns

-Bay Leaves

Making the Pickles

Prep Your Canning Supplies

Wash jars, flats, and bands in hot, soapy water. To prevent stress cracks, it’s important to make sure the jars are hot when you start filling them. Place them in the canner, cover them with water by an inch or two, and set the burner on medium-low heat while you get the ingredients together.

Prep the Ingredients

I like to start with making the brine so it can come to a simmer while I’m slicing the veggies. Add 2 cups apple cider vinegar, 2 cups white vinegar, one quart water, ½ cup pickling salt, and ¼ cup sugar to your brine pot. Bring to a simmer on medium-high heat, stirring every now and then until the salt and sugar is fully dissolved (usually just takes a minute or two). Turn the heat off and put a lid on it to keep it warm until you’re ready to fill the jars.

While you wait for the brine to simmer, get your fresh ingredients ready to pack. Wash the cucumbers in cold water and slice them however you prefer; spears, slices, or rounds. Make sure they’re cut short enough to fit in a pint jar without sticking too far above the jar’s neck. Many long-time pickles makers also swear by slicing off the blossom end to help keep them crunchy after canning.

Next, slice 3 – 4 habanero peppers into quarter-inch slices. Peel your garlic cloves and lightly crush them to help release the flavor. You’ll need about 2 average-sized cloves per jar, which usually equals 1 – 2 garlic bulbs.

*Note: It’s ALWAYS a good call to wear some disposable food prep gloves when you’re cutting up hot peppers of any kind (especially really hot ones like habaneros). The capsaicin in hot peppers can make your hands hurt for hours after handling if a lot of it gets on your skin. Don’t learn this one the hard way like I did!

Start Packin’

Pro Tip: To keep things from cooling too much while packing the jars, fill each jar one at a time, like so: remove a jar from the canner, fill it, add the flat and band, and return it to the hot canner before starting the next one. Keeping everything hot helps the canner come to a boil faster and prevents thermal shock breaks.

Steps for Packing Jars: 

First, add peppers, garlic, and seasonings (except the bay leaves). Per jar, add two habanero slices, two garlic cloves, ½ tsp. dried dill (or 1 – 2 sprigs fresh), ½ tsp mustard seed, and a pinch of peppercorns (about 5 – 7).

Pack the cucumbers: Pack each jar as full as you can without bruising or damaging the cucumbers. If your cucumbers are cut into spears, tilting the jar sideways (propped on an oven mitt or folded towel) makes it easier to pack them. If you pack them REALLY loose, you might not have quite enough brine for that last jar.

Add the bay leaves: I like to stick the bay leaves in after the cucumbers are packed. They make the final product look snazzy, when they’re visible instead of stuffed down at the bottom of the jar.

Top with brine: Using the funnel, ladle hot brine into each packed jar, leaving ½ inch headspace at the top. Once filled, use a de-bubbler or a butter knife to gently release any air bubbles between the cucumbers, topping off with more brine if needed.

Add flats and bands: As you pack and fill, wipe each jar rim with a clean, damp cloth to remove any spilled brine, then add a flat and a band. Don’t overtighten the bands; they should be “fingertip tight,” which just means not so tight you’d need a lot of force to loosen them.    

Process the Pickles

These pickles need to be processed at a full rolling boil for 10 minutes. If you’re more than 1,000 feet above sea level, you’ll need to add a little bit of processing time. See Ball’s instructions for adjusting your processing time for higher elevations.

Before you start the timer for processing, make sure the canner has reached a steady boil that can’t be stirred down. Keep an eye on things while processing. You may need to turn the heat down slightly, if the canner starts boiling too hard. You want a steady, rolling boil, not an overly aggressive boil that’s slinging water everywhere and knocking the jars around.

After processing is complete, let the canner chill out for 5 minutes. Then, take the jars out and let them cool undisturbed overnight (at least 12 hours). At this point, you can remove the bands and check the seals. Properly sealed lids should not flex when you gently press the center. If you have a jar that didn’t seal, you can put it in the fridge and eat the pickles within a few months. Don’t forget to date and label the jars before storing.

*A Note on Processing Time: The Ball Blue Book dill pickle recipe states a 15-minute blanket processing time for both pint AND quart jars. Other tested pickle recipes with the same 1:1 brine ratio allow 10 minutes for pints and 15 minutes for quarts. I choose to can pickles in pint jars and go with the 10-minute guideline to avoid cooking the pickles to mush. Feel free to do your own research on this if you have concerns!

Storing Home-Canned Pickles

Canned pickles will stay at best quality when stored in a dark(ish) place without high humidity or big temperature fluctuations. Your pantry or whatever available cabinet space you have is a good bet. The pickles will taste best when eaten within one year of processing (but are safe to eat beyond this as long as the seals are intact and the pickles still smell/taste good).