Amish canning recipes are the sweet-and-sour jars associated with Pennsylvania Dutch and Amish pantries: bread-and-butter pickles, pickled beets, pepper relish, chow chow, dilly beans, and apple butter. People search the phrase because they want those specific flavors—not generic “canning recipes”—and they want a batch they can store on a shelf.
The catch is that many heirloom formulas were written for open-kettle canning: cook the food, pour it into hot jars, and tighten the lids. That method is no longer considered safe. The recipes below keep the traditional taste profile and pair it with tested water-bath or pressure-canning steps from current home-food-preservation guidance.
What “Amish Canning” Usually Means
Amish and Pennsylvania Dutch households put up large gardens. The goal is not novelty. It is winter food: condiments for roast meats, potatoes, and sandwiches, plus fruit spreads for bread and baked goods.
The flavor pattern repeats across the best-known jars:
- Vinegar for sharpness
- Sugar for balance
- Mustard seed, celery seed, turmeric, cinnamon, or cloves
- Mixed vegetables used up at the end of the season
Chow chow is the clearest example. It is an end-of-garden relish—cabbage, green tomatoes, peppers, onions, beans, and whatever else is left—packed in a sweet-tart brine. Recipes vary by family and county, which is why no single “official” chow chow formula exists.
That variability is useful for cooking. It is a problem for canning science. Safety depends on acidity, jar size, pack style, and process time—not on whether a recipe is old.
Use a Water Bath or a Pressure Canner—Not Both for the Same Food
High-acid foods can go in a boiling-water canner. Low-acid foods cannot.
| Food | Why it matters | Safe method |
|---|---|---|
| Pickles, relishes, pickled beets, most jams, apple butter | Acid from fruit or 5% vinegar | Boiling-water bath |
| Plain green beans, corn, meat, most soups | pH above 4.6 | Pressure canner only |
| Pickled green beans (dilly beans) | Vinegar lowers the pH | Water bath |
Green beans are the most common mix-up. Plain canned beans need a pressure canner. The same beans packed in a vinegar brine can be water-bath canned as pickled dilled beans.
Do not water-bath meatloaf, plain vegetables, or eggs. Old community cookbooks sometimes say to “pack and boil.” That is not a tested process for low-acid food. Red beet eggs belong in the refrigerator, not on a pantry shelf.
Ingredients that actually affect safety
- Vinegar must be 5% acidity. Salad vinegar and many flavored vinegars are weaker. Do not reduce the vinegar in a pickle recipe to make it milder.
- Use canning or pickling salt. Iodized table salt can cloud brine.
- Do not thicken pickle brine with flour or cornstarch before canning unless you are following a tested recipe written that way. Flour is common in old mustard-pickle formulas and is one reason those recipes should stay in the refrigerator or be rebuilt from a tested relish recipe.
- Altitude changes process time. Times below are for 0–1,000 feet. Add time if you live higher; extension charts list the increases.
Bread-and-Butter Pickles
This is the sweet cucumber pickle most people mean when they want an “Amish pickle.” The official tested version matches the old flavor: sugar, vinegar, mustard seed, celery seed, and turmeric.
Yield: about 8 pints
Ingredients
- 6 pounds 4- to 5-inch pickling cucumbers
- 8 cups thinly sliced onions (about 3 pounds)
- ½ cup canning or pickling salt
- 4 cups vinegar (5%)
- 4½ cups sugar
- 2 tablespoons mustard seed
- 1½ tablespoons celery seed
- 1 tablespoon ground turmeric
Method
- Wash cucumbers. Cut 1/16 inch off the blossom end and discard it. Slice cucumbers about 3/16 inch thick.
- Combine cucumbers and onions with the salt. Cover with 2 inches of crushed ice. Refrigerate 3 to 4 hours, adding ice as needed. Drain well. The ice soak pulls water out so the slices stay firmer.
- Combine vinegar, sugar, and spices. Boil 10 minutes.
- Add cucumbers and onions. Bring the mixture back to a boil slowly.
- Pack slices and hot syrup into jars, leaving ½-inch headspace. Remove air bubbles, wipe rims, and apply lids.
Process in a boiling-water canner (hot pack):
- Pints or quarts, 0–1,000 ft: 10 minutes
- 1,001–6,000 ft: 15 minutes
- Above 6,000 ft: 20 minutes
Wait 4 to 5 weeks before opening a jar. The flavor settles during storage. Slender zucchini or yellow squash can replace cucumbers; skip any lime-soak variation if you make that swap.
Pickled Beets
Pickled red beets show up on Amish and Pennsylvania Dutch tables as a side dish and as the brine for red beet eggs. The shelf-stable product is the beets. The eggs are a second step and must be refrigerated.
Yield: about 8 pints
Ingredients
- 7 pounds beets, 2 to 2½ inches across
- 4 cups vinegar (5%)
- 1½ teaspoons canning or pickling salt
- 2 cups sugar
- 2 cups water
- 2 cinnamon sticks
- 12 whole cloves
- 4 to 6 onions, 2 to 2½ inches across, optional
Method
- Trim tops, leaving 1 inch of stem and the taproot so the color does not bleed out while cooking. Wash and sort by size.
- Cover similar sizes with boiling water. Cook until tender, about 25 to 30 minutes.
- Drain and discard that cooking liquid. Cool, slip off skins, and slice ¼ inch thick. Slice onions thin.
- Combine vinegar, salt, sugar, and fresh water. Tie spices in a cheesecloth bag and add them. Bring to a boil.
- Add beets and onions. Simmer 5 minutes. Remove the spice bag.
- Pack beets and onions into jars. Cover with hot vinegar solution, ½-inch headspace.
Process in a boiling-water canner (hot pack):
- Pints or quarts, 0–1,000 ft: 30 minutes
- 1,001–3,000 ft: 35 minutes
- 3,001–6,000 ft: 40 minutes
- Above 6,000 ft: 45 minutes
Baby beets (1 to 1½ inches) can be packed whole. Onions can be left out.
Red beet eggs stay in the fridge
After you open a jar of pickled beets, you can add peeled hard-cooked eggs to the leftover brine. Cover and refrigerate. Flavor usually peaks after several days. This is a refrigerator pickle, not a canned egg product. Do not process jars of whole eggs for pantry storage.
Pepper Relish
Sweet red and green pepper relish is a standard Amish-country condiment: chopped peppers and onions cooked in vinegar and sugar until the raw bite is gone. Traditional community recipes look like this:
- 12 sweet red peppers, seeded and chopped
- 12 sweet green peppers, seeded and chopped
- 8 small onions, chopped
- 1 quart vinegar (5%)
- 1½ cups sugar
- 2 teaspoons salt
The usual old method is to cover the chopped vegetables with boiling water for 5 minutes, drain, cover again for 10 minutes, drain thoroughly (often overnight), then boil the vegetables with vinegar, sugar, and salt about 20 minutes.
That formula is high in vinegar, which is why it belongs with pickled relishes rather than with plain vegetables. For shelf storage, do not stop at “pour into jars and seal.” Use a boiling-water process written for pickle relish or a similar tested relish, or refrigerate the finished relish and use it within a few weeks.
If you want a fully tested relish instead of adapting an heirloom formula, use the National Center for Home Food Preservation pickle-relish recipe and keep the pepper-and-onion mix as your flavor target.
Chow Chow, Without Guessing on Safety
Chow chow is the jar people associate most strongly with Amish canning. It is a mixed pickled relish. Common vegetables include cabbage, green tomatoes, onions, sweet peppers, green beans, lima or butter beans, carrots, cauliflower, and celery. The brine is vinegar, sugar, salt, mustard seed, celery seed, and often turmeric.
Two problems appear in circulated recipes:
- Vegetable lists change from batch to batch, which changes density and acidity.
- Some versions thicken the brine with flour or pack low-acid vegetables without enough vinegar.
Treat chow chow as a pickled mixed-vegetable relish, not as a free-form stew you water-bath for 10 minutes.
Practical way to make it:
- Choose a tested pickled mixed-vegetable or pickle-relish process as the frame.
- Keep the vinegar at 5% and do not cut the acid.
- Cut vegetables uniformly so heat moves through the jar the same way.
- Hot-pack the vegetables in the boiling brine.
- Process for the time listed in that tested recipe for your jar size and altitude.
If you only want a small batch for the next few weeks, make the family formula, cool it, and keep it refrigerated. That is closer to how many farm kitchens used mixed relishes before modern two-piece lids and researched process times.
Serve chow chow with roast pork, pot pie, hot dogs, beans, and leftover meat. That is its job: a sharp, sweet counterpoint to rich food.
Pickled Dilled Green Beans
When the bean row produces more than you want to pressure-can, pickled beans are the water-bath option. They are often sold at Amish markets as “dilly beans.”
Yield: about 8 pints
Ingredients
- 4 pounds fresh tender green or yellow beans, 5 to 6 inches long
- 8 to 16 heads fresh dill
- 8 garlic cloves, optional
- ½ cup canning or pickling salt
- 4 cups white vinegar (5%)
- 4 cups water
- 1 teaspoon hot red pepper flakes, optional
Method
- Wash beans. Trim ends and cut to about 4 inches.
- Put 1 to 2 dill heads and a garlic clove in each hot pint jar.
- Pack beans upright, ½-inch headspace.
- Boil salt, vinegar, water, and pepper flakes. Pour the hot brine over the beans, ½-inch headspace. Remove bubbles.
Process pints in a boiling-water canner (raw pack): 5 minutes at 0–1,000 feet; longer at higher elevations. Check a current USDA/NCHFP table for your altitude.
These need a few weeks in the jar before they taste like pickles rather than salty beans.
Plain (unpickled) green beans still require a pressure canner: pints 20 minutes and quarts 25 minutes at 10 or 11 pounds pressure, with the weight or dial setting adjusted for altitude. That is a different product.
Apple Butter
Apple butter is the fruit side of the same pantry. Pennsylvania Dutch versions are dark, thick, and heavily spiced with cinnamon and cloves. A tested canning formula is:
- 8 pounds apples (Jonathan, Winesap, Stayman, Golden Delicious, McIntosh, or similar)
- 2 cups apple cider
- 2 cups vinegar
- 2¼ cups white sugar
- 2¼ cups packed brown sugar
- 2 tablespoons ground cinnamon
- 1 tablespoon ground cloves
Yield: about 9 to 10 pints
Wash, quarter, and core the apples (peels can stay on for cooking). Cook slowly in cider and vinegar until soft. Run through a food mill. Cook the pulp with sugar and spices, stirring often so it does not scorch.
It is done when a spoonful mounds on a plate and liquid does not separate around the edge. Pack hot, leaving the headspace specified in the recipe you follow.
Process in a boiling-water canner (hot pack):
- Half-pints or pints, 0–1,000 ft: 5 minutes
- Quarts, 0–1,000 ft: 10 minutes
- Increase time at higher elevations as listed in the official table.
Long, slow cooking is the “Amish” part. The short water-bath process is what makes the jar shelf-stable. Do not confuse fruit butter with canned dairy butter. Melting butter into jars is not a researched canning method.
Other Jars That Fit the Same Kitchen
These are worth putting up if your garden matches them. Use tested recipes for each one rather than scaling a relish brine by guesswork.
- Quick fresh-pack dill pickles for a less-sweet cucumber jar
- Corn relish when sweet corn and cabbage overlap
- Pickled pears or other firm fruit in a spiced vinegar-sugar syrup
- Strawberry or mixed-fruit jam for breakfast bread
- Tomato products only when the recipe includes added acid (bottled lemon juice or citric acid) as specified
Meat, broth, and plain vegetables belong in a pressure canner. If a social-media “Amish meatloaf in a jar” recipe uses a water bath, skip it.
How These Jars Get Used
The recipes make more sense if you plan the plate, not just the pantry.
- Bread-and-butter pickles: sandwiches, potato salad, leftover roast beef
- Pickled beets: Sunday dinner side, salads, red beet eggs
- Pepper relish: meatloaf, hot dogs, white beans, grilled sausage
- Chow chow: pot pie, pork, potatoes, anything fatty
- Dilly beans: relish trays, Bloody Mary garnish, picnic sides
- Apple butter: toast, biscuits, yogurt, pork roast glaze, baked oatmeal
Make the condiments in pints if your household is small. Quart jars of relish often go stale after opening.
Mistakes That Ruin the Batch
Sealing without processing. A lid that “pops down” after hot food is poured in is not the same as a processed seal. Open-kettle canning is the main hazard in photocopied Amish recipe collections.
Cutting the vinegar or sugar in a pickle recipe. Sugar affects texture and flavor. Vinegar affects safety. If the pickle is too sharp, choose a tested sweet-pickle recipe rather than watering down a sour one.
Using the blossom end of cucumbers. The blossom end holds enzymes that soften pickles. Trim it.
Packing jars too tightly. Overpacked pickles do not heat evenly. Follow the headspace.
Water-bathing low-acid food because “Amish families did it.” Families also kept jars in cold cellars and ate through them quickly. Modern rooms are warmer, and Clostridium botulinum does not care about tradition.
Ignoring altitude. Ten minutes at sea level is not ten minutes in the mountains.
Opening pickles the next day. Sweet pickles and dilly beans need weeks. If you want pickles this weekend, make a refrigerator pickle.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are Amish canning recipes different from regular canning recipes? The flavor combinations are different. The food-safety rules are not. Heat, acidity, and jar size work the same in every kitchen.
Can I can these in an oven or dishwasher? No. Those methods do not heat the contents reliably and are not accepted processes.
Do I need a special “Amish canner”? No. A deep stockpot with a rack works for water-bath pickles if the water covers the jars by at least 1 inch. Low-acid food needs a weighted-gauge or dial-gauge pressure canner.
Why do some old recipes call for olive oil on cucumber pickles? Oil is a traditional flavoring in a few mustard-pickle formulas. Oil on the rim can interfere with a seal, and oil-based mixtures are not interchangeable with tested vinegar pickles. Use a current pickle recipe if you want shelf-stable jars.
How long do processed jars keep? For best quality, use them within a year. Store in a cool, dark place. Refrigerate after opening. If a lid is unsealed, the food is bubbling, or the smell is off, discard the jar. Do not taste food from a suspect low-acid jar.
Where should I check process times? Use the National Center for Home Food Preservation or the USDA Complete Guide to Home Canning, plus your state Extension office for altitude. Those sources are the reference behind the times in this article.
The useful way to approach Amish canning recipes is to steal the flavor and keep the science. Put up bread-and-butter pickles, pickled beets, a pepper relish, dilly beans, and apple butter first. Those five jars cover most of what people want from the search, and each one has a clear, tested path from kettle to shelf.