If you want to hear a long diatribe about the history of my family and their skilled pickle making over the last century….you can go ahead and close out of this page now. I have traditionally sucked at making pickles. My family never pickled anything. We are not into canning…and we are not into preserving food in any way except for the freezer. But…I love pickles. Any kind of pickle. If you can pickle it, I’ll eat it.
Until I found this recipe…I have been hit or miss in the homemade pickle department. This recipe is just like many of the other hundreds you can find on the internet…but this one is mine. And if you think you can’t up your pickle game…try this. Really, if I can resurrect myself in the pickle world, so can you.
What you need:
- 1 ½ cups of distilled white vinegar
- ¼ cup granulated sugar
- 4 tablespoons of kosher salt
- 1 teaspoon of mustard seeds
- 1/2 teaspoon of dill seeds (optional, if you don’t have them on hand, skip this step)
- 2 cups of hot water (I bring my tea kettle to a boil and let it sit for a few minutes)
- 6 Kirby Cucumbers
- 3 sprigs of fresh dill
- 3 cloves of fresh garlic
Ready…
- Boil the 2 cups of water and set aside
- In a large glass bowl mix the vinegar, salt, sugar, mustard seeds, and dill seeds together
- Add the 2 cups of hot water and mix until all the salt and sugar dissolve
- Set the mixture aside and let cool
- Wash your cucumbers and cut the “blossom” end of the cucumber off. The blossom end of the cuke has an enzyme that can make your pickles mushy…find the “stem” end and the blossom end will be opposite the “stem” end. If you don’t have a stem on your cukes, the stem end will have a smooth, indented “dot”. The blossom end will have a rougher feeling “dot”. Anyway, cut that end off and trash it, then cut the cukes in about ¼ inch pieces.
- I fill three jars with the cut cucumbers, after filling half way to the top, I add one sprig of dill and one clove of garlic to the jar. I like to smash my garlic cloves before adding them, I feel it lets more flavor steep into the pickling mixture.
- Once the jars are full, pour the cooled mixture over the pickles until you have them submerged.
- Chill overnight in the fridge and eat’em up. They can last in the fridge about 2 weeks…but my kids and I can usually work our way through three jars in less time than that.
Thanks for reading, leave us a note to let us know how your pickles turned out. You can also follow us on social media and post some pictures of your food for us to see.
~C