Cucumber Pickles

[Penny]

Originally Posted by Zana

LOL...take-off , you hoser! Eh?!?

Greaaaat......Bob and Doug Mackenzie stuck in my head now

[tessa]

the beer hunter didn't have pickles, i'm sure

[duajones]

Tessa. I have made 8 batches of the pickles so far, 2 of the fresh pickle spears, 2 which were more like dill slices, and 4 of the bread and butter pickles varying the ingredients somewhat. The constant on every batch was the amount of pickling salt I used. 1 tsp for salting the cukes, then draining well and 2 TBSP in the brine. I have shared them with several people and none of them think they were too salty. Not sure why that is because if you sub Sea Salt for pickling salt supposedly you would use a little more
Note: For the dill slices I omitted the fennel and coriander seed and of course used regular white vinegar instead of the white wine vinegar. My son that prefers dill pickles claims they are the best dill flavored pickles I have made to date. Using the regular refrigerator method I have made over 100 quarts

[tessa]

hi duane.
i am noting that over time...the pickles are getting less salty.
maybe i was eating them too soon?

[duajones]

maybe so tessa, my son claims they improved in flavor quite a bit after a few days although they were edible within 24 hours.

[duajones]

Here is a bread and butter pickle recipe that is pretty darn good. Ready to eat the next day but do improve if you let them set 4 or 5 days.

http://www.thehungrymouse.com/2009/0...ning-required/

[Donna Mattingly]

Our garden is going CRAZY with CUCUMBERS! We have Straight 8 and also a Parisian cucumber that is great when small.

I saw a recipe here similar to the one I'm about to post, but thought by posting I could maybe bring this topic to the forefront as we all get busy preserving our harvests.

I tried this recipe a couple of years ago and was so surprised - in the dead of winter - when I remembered those little bags of cucumbers in the freezer... they were like a burst of sunshine and fresh garden goodness, they tasted SO FRESH! And crunchy! I was won over for the simplicity and great taste, and tonight I'm making yet another double batch. The recipe is from a book called Small Batch Preserving, by Topp & Howard. (I really like that book...)

Without further adieu, here's the recipe.

FREEZER BREAD AND BUTTER PICKLES

A fast variation of a traditional favorite, this easy recipe requires little preparation and no processing time. Either English or small pickling cucumbers can be used.
__

4 cups thinly sliced cucumbers (about 3/16 inch or 4mm thick)
1 cup thinly sliced onion
1 sweet red pepper, thinly sliced
2 tsp pickling salt
1 1/2 cups cider vinegar
2/3 cup sugar
1 tsp mustard seeds
1/2 tsp celery seeds
1/2 tsp turmeric
___

Place cucumbers, onion and red pepper in large non-reactive container. Sprinkle with salt and mix well. Let stand for 3 hours, stirring occasionally; drain. Rinse twice and drain thoroughly.

Heat vinegar in microwave oven for 30 seconds or warm slightly on the stove top. Combine vinegar, sugar, mustard seeds, celery seeds and turmeric in a small bowl stirring until sugar is dissolved. Pour over vegetables and mix well.

Pack vegetables into small freezer containers. Divide liquid and pour over pickles. Seal tightly and freeze. (NOTE: I just use quart freezer bags and always write something memorable on the bag about the day here at home or anything in the national or international news that might be happening at the moment I close the bag - it's just fun when the bags are unearthed! A veggie time-capsule, of sorts).

Store pickles in freezer up to six months*. Once thawed, use them within several days before they lose their crunch.
Makes about 3 cups (750 ML).

*NOTE - 6 months might be best, but in my experience these are still great up to almost a year.

[recruiterg]

I love this recipe. With a pressure canner, what would be the correct amount of time and number of pounds of pressure to can refrigerator pickles if you wanted to make a large batch and store in the pantry?

[miken]

My mother used to make dill pickles in a crock all the time.

You need a basement that is cool (around 65 degrees is ideal, she would have said), and a ceramic crock. (She used a 5 gallon crock.)

Fill the crock up to 3/4 full with cucumbers, add pickling liquid (at room temperature) and seasonings. (She used dill and some lump alum and sometimes a clove or two of garlic.)

Cover the pickles with a ceramic or glass plate that just barely fits in the crock and weigh that down with a clean jar filled with water. Cover the crock with a towel.

After a few days, you may get some scum on the top, skim it off, wash the plate and jar, and weigh the pickles down again.

They'll be at the 'sampling' point in about 2 weeks, and fully pickled in 4-6 weeks.

Her recipe for pickling liquid was:

2 quarts water
1 quarts white vinegar
3/4 cup pickling salt

She would bring this to a boil, then let it cool for crock pickles. When hot pack canning pickles, she'd use it without letting it cool.

However, I usually increase the amount of vinegar by a half cup, because I think 50 years ago when she was making pickles vinegar was a bit more acetic than it is today.

[OneDahlia]

Made some pickles last week, loosely based on a combo of the first two recipes on this thread.



I filled two gallon canning jars and processed them in a hot-water bath and the lids sucked in -- yay! Had a lot of veggies left over, so I had to grab and sterilize a few regular clean jars and fill those too.

Sampled one of the smaller jars -- delicious!

I used cucumbers, carrots, cabbage and cayenne and banana peppers. The jar in the middle has all the green cherry tomatoes and ordono peppers I picked just before the snow plus the last pieces of leftover cabbage. Seasoned it all with lots of garlic, some dill and some chopped jalapenos in the salt-vinegar mixture. They do have a kick! I'm happy that the cucumbers are still crunchy.

Thanks for sharing the recipes!

[stonysoilseeds]

i am growing cornichon pickling cukes for the first timehas anyone else grown them ive never had sucess pickling before but i hope to get more into it this year

[bower]

That looks like a great recipe, I'll have to try it.

I found this really simple recipe for pepperoncini and vegetable pickles last year:

Combine in a saucepan and heat to boiling:
2 cups white vinegar
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon mustard seed
The amounts can be halved for a small batch, or doubled for more.

Chop pepperoncini into half inch pieces, or slices, or if you want them whole, make a long cut down the side so they take up the brine and don't float.
Stack into a mason jar, with slices of sweet onions, fresh carrot, cauliflower and slivers of garlic. Only use top quality clean fresh vegs for this recipe.
Pour the hot brine into the jar to cover the vegs completely. Seal the lid while still hot. Tap the bottom to release any bubbles trapped amongst the vegs.
Once cooled, store in the fridge. Ready after two weeks, and keeps well for several months.

The pickles are crunchy, and the flavour of the peppers goes into the other vegs making them really tasty. These were great served on a cheese tray.
The leftover pickle juice had a great pepper flavour too, so we used it in marinades.

[recruiterg]

First batch of the summer. Yes.

[Hotwired]

I pickle everything with this brine, from cukes to green beans and beets. I found this hand-written recipe in one of my grandmother's cookbooks. I am a pickle addict and this is by far the best sweet pickle recipe I've tried.

Here's a detailed photo step-by-step in a PDF - http://www.hotwiredgardens.com/pdf/H...et_Pickles.pdf

Prepare the Following:

4 Quarts of Sliced Cucumbers Cut 1/16" Thick (16 Pickling Cukes)
6 Medium Onions Sliced 1/8" thick rings
1 each of Red & Green Peppers cut in 1/4" to 3/8" wide strips
3 Cloves of Garlic (3 Sections cut up)
2 Trays of Ice Cubes
1/3 Cup of Salt

In a Large Pan or on a Cafeteria Tray:

Layer half the Cukes, Onions, Peppers, and Garlic in the Pan
Sprinkle half the salt over the tray, and add 1 Tray of Ice Cubes.
Repeat with the other half on top of the first layer. Let stand for 3 hours. Refrigerating is optional.

Mix & bring to a boil the following:

3 Cups of Distilled White Vinegar
5 Cups of Sugar
1-1/2 tsp. of Tumeric
1-1/2 tsp. of Celery Seed
1-1/2 tsp. of Mustard Seed

Directions

Drain the tray of Vegetables and mix into the brine, and bring to a boil. Can the pickles using a hot water bath method. Pressure canning is not necessary for pickles. Sterilize the jars and lids in boiling water. Fill the jars with the pickle mixture, then add the brine till it is about 1/4" from the top rim. Wipe the rim with a clean damp cloth and place the lid on the jars. Place the jars into a hotwater bath (boiling water). Make sure the water covers the jars when the canner is fully loaded. Cover the canner, and bring to boil, and hold at a boil for 20 minutes. Remove the jars, and let cool. You will hear a pop when the jar seals. If you press in the center of the lid, it should not move.

Note: If you have extra liquid left over, you can can it and make a small batch of pickled beets later. Just cook your beets, skin and slice them, and place them in a canning jar. Cover with the liquid and can as above. They're incredible.

Happy Pickling.....

[Redbaron]

You are right Hotwire They are incredible. I definitely agree 100% That's the same exact recipe and method my Grandmother used for sweet pickles. And one year we were canning beets and ran out of vinegar. So we finished off a jar of Grandmas sweet pickles and added the "juice" to the normal Ball Canning recipe for beets.

Best beets we ever canned.