BEST REFRIGERATOR BREAD AND BUTTER PICKLES

TOP REVIEWS:

I never rate or review anything so this must be a great recipe. I’ve been canning pickles for over 30 years and wanted a new recipe, I tried this one and if you are a beginner or a pro and you want a great recipe then you should try this one! I made 30 pints in July 2009 and gave them as gifts, as well as ate them, they were a hit. They were too salty after much rinsing so I cut back the salt to about half after the first batch. I started making double the recipe. I mixed them in a large cooler to have enough room to blend everything real well. I added 2 red and 2 orange peppers to the recipe to give it color and just chopped it instead of diced because the peppers are just as good to eat. I put ice on the top while the mix stands so the cukes and peppers get crisp. The cooler helps keep the ice from melting too fast. I packed the pint jars with the cukes then ladled in the brine, this works fine. I put them in a 10 minute ‘bath’ since I made so many and wanted them to last. I opened the last jar a few weeks ago and it is just as fresh as when I made them last year. I just finished making 45 pints today. They’re ready to eat right away. Fantastic pickles! Thank you, David. Another pickle tidbit: when storing pickles, turn them upside down, so that the top pickles are soaking in the brine, since the pickles will rise. Then as you eat them the bottom soaks.

The salt draws water from the veggies, thus they need to be drained. By removing some of the liquid from them, they turn out crisper as pickles. I do, however, like to mix a quart of cracked ice into the mixture, to keep it cold. It melts, and everything is well drained at the end of 3 hours. My family loves these!

The combination of spices make a great tasting pickle but when it says use a large bowl they should have said a tub…I used three large bowls and then poured it all into a tub to mix the cukes with the salt. I also covered the salted cukes with ice and a loose cover (I think the ice gives the pickles a little more crispness)

My family loves these! They are less sweet than grocery store b&b and crunchier. My husband who is not usually a fan of b&b likes these almost as much as dills now. 🙂 I made mine in lengthwise slices so that they could be used along with the onions and bell peppers as sandwich dressings. Some things that I wanted to touch on that will clear up some of the confusion about the recipe, you MUST save the juices that come out of the cucumbers when soaking in salt and you cannot reduce the amount of salt because what you are doing is creating a balanced brine. If the brine is not the correct volume of salt/sugar/vinegar and water they will not cure or be safe for canning. The reason that some are finding the recipe too salty is that it is CRITICAL to use canning salt. Canning salt has a different volume per measure than table salt or any other. So you if you use the recommended measure in table salt instead, you are adding WAY more than you need. I did hot water bath can my pickles, you can find the instructions for how long on pick your own.com How long you do it for depends on your size jar and altitude. Hope that helps someone!

INGREDIENTS:

5½ cups (about 1½ pounds) thinly sliced (about ¼-inch) pickling cucumbers

1½ tablespoons kosher salt

1 cup thinly sliced sweet onion

1 cup (198 grams) granulated sugar

1 cup (240 ml) white vinegar

½ cup (120 ml) apple cider vinegar

¼ cup (50 grams) light brown sugar

1½ teaspoons mustard seeds

½ teaspoon celery seeds

1/8 teaspoon ground turmeric

DIRECTIONS:

1. Combine cucumbers and salt in a large, shallow bowl; cover and chill 1½ hours. Move cucumbers into a colander and rinse thoroughly under cold water. Drain well, and return cucumbers to bowl. Add onion to the bowl and toss with the cucumbers.
2. Combine the granulated sugar, white vinegar, apple cider vinegar, brown sugar, mustard seeds, celery seeds and ground turmeric in a medium saucepan; bring to a simmer over medium heat, stirring until the sugar dissolves …