A transplanted Southern Californian living in North Dakota Idaho, with some insights on life with deaf dogs, a gluten free spouse, and the occasional mischievous garden gnome. Thank you for visiting and I hope you enjoy.





Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Bread and Butter Pickles

We've got three different kinds of cucumbers going right now (regular, pickling, Armenian) and they're all kicking into high production.  What better to do with cucumbers than make delicious sweet pickles, also known as bread and butter pickles.  Special thanks to Mama Bear since this is her recipe.

These are refrigerator pickles, they live in your refrigerator, so you don't even need to know how to can to make them.  It's super duper easy.  Just boil up some stuff, chop the cukes (and a few other things), and combine it all in a big glass jar. 

You will need:
  • 10 to 14 medium sized cucumbers
  • 1 onion sliced
  • 1 pepper chopped
  • 2 1/2 tsp mustard seed
  • 2 1/2 tsp dill seed
In a large pot, bring to a boil the following (stirring occasionally):
  • 1 pint water
  • 1 quart vinegar
  • 4 cups sugar
  • 1/3 cup pickling salt (regular salt will work too)
In a large glass 5 quart jar add the mustard seed and dill seed and a few of the onion slices.  Then add the cucumbers, pepper, and remaining onions.  Pour the boiling liquid into the jar (please do this carefully) and allow to set in the refrigerator for 7 days. 
My first jar of pickles.  Though when I made this batch I didn't have enough cucumbers to fill the jar, but no worries.  A few days later there were more ripe cucumbers in the garden and I just sliced them up and added them to the jar, and kept going until the jar was properly packed with pickles.

3 comments:

Karen said...

Oh, my very favorite pickles of all time, and yes, I make them the same way. Now I wish I had more pickles, this year's crop was nada, zip, zero. Enjoy them!

El Gaucho said...

Really, no cucumbers this year? We have 'em coming out our ears. Bummer, these are my favorite pickles as well and I hope they make the long cold trudge through winter a bit more tolerable.

Anonymous said...

Those look really tasty, and bread and butter pickles are the best. You can keep your dill pickles, I'll take my sweet pickles any day of the week.