In my infinite wisdom, I gave my hubby the go-ahead last fall to increase the size of our garden (and by increase, i mean quadruple) . His first order of business? 14 Pickling Cucumber plants. Now, I don’t care for pickles… or anything with vinegar in it for that matter, but let me tell you what, thats a lot of cucumbers. So here are a few of my escapades:
Refrigerator Sweet & Spicy Dill Pickles
- 12 3 to 4 inch long pickling cucumbers
- 2 cups water
- 1 3/4 cups white vinegar
- 1 1/2 cups chopped fresh dill weed
- 1/2 cup white sugar
- 8 cloves garlic, chopped
- 1 1/2 tablespoons coarse salt
- 1 tablespoon pickling spice
- 1 1/2 teaspoons dill seed
- 1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes, or to taste
- 4 sprigs fresh dill weed
Directions
- In a large bowl, combine the cucumbers, water, vinegar, chopped dill, sugar, garlic, salt, pickling spice, dill seed, and red pepper flakes. Stir, and let stand at room temperature for 2 hours, until the sugar and salt dissolve.
- Remove the cucumbers to three 1 1/2 pint wide mouth jars, placing 4 cucumbers into each jar. Ladle in the liquid from the bowl to cover. Place a sprig of fresh dill into each jar, and seal with lids. Refrigerate for 10 days before eating. Use within 1 month.
I doubled it with just our first week’s worth of pickles, but i think they turned out quite well.
But, of course, refrigerator pickles don’t exactly last all year and we can’t possibly eat or give away all those pickles, so it was time to bring out the big guns: fermented pickles.
I used a big 1/2 gal jar and just popped them babies in whole. I used the same spices as the recipe above, putting in half, then the pickles, then the rest of the spices. I then mixed a brine of 8 c. water, 1/2 c. canning salt & 1/4 c. vinegar (5% acidity) and poured enough to cover the pickles by more than an inch. Then i squeezed a plastic lid into the jar and put a smaller jar full of water & rocks on top, the point being to keep the pickles submerged in the brine but it still having enough room to breathe & ferment. Now I just have to wait 4 more weeks to see how they turned out… updates to follow.
Leave a comment