Summer Garden Recipe: Quick Dill and Bread & Butter Pickles!
I know I've been lacking on the blog posts lately. Work has been crazy this month, so unfortunately, many personal things, including getting things done around the house, have taken a back seat. I also am adjunct faculty at a local university, so classes start at the end of the month. My job is always crazy busy, so there is never really a break from that, but I do see some things starting to settle down, which will hopefully leave some time for blog posts. I have many started and in progress and cannot wait to share some of my favorite fall posts with you soon!
in the meantime, I wanted to really do a series on my favorite garden recipes. Although it's not really turning into a series, I'm still eating from my garden on the daily, so I've been anxious to share some of my favorite recipes with you.
My cucumbers did AWESOME this year. I find it funny that I was all worried I wasn't going to get cucumbers, and I ended up getting 8-10 daily! Since I had so many pickling cucumbers, I decided to do two types of pickles, which I also did last year. I do not do a big canning process simply because I find that I actually never really eat my canned vegetables, never have THAT big of a harvest to can tons of goods, and this quick pickle process is much simpler and still lasts up to three months in the fridge!
QUICK DILL PICKLES
So my quick dill pickle recipe has been the conglomeration of a variety of recipes I have tried from Pinterest. I typically only make about 2-3 quart mason jars at a time, so I tend to look for recipes that make a smaller amount of jars.
For my recipe, I used about 4-5 larger sized picking cucumbers and sliced them. You can do spears or whole, but I find that these absorb the flavor the best and are easy to pack into the jar.
Ingredients:
4-5 large pickling cucumbers (you can use smaller but you will need more. I was able to flll about 2 mason jars with sliced cucumbers)
3 1/2 cups water
1 1/4 cups vinegar
1 tablespoon sea salt
2 minced garlic cloves (one per jar)
Peppercorns (about 10-20 per jar)
Bunch of fresh dill (I chopped up and also included dill seeds)
Sugar
1) Cut up the cukes to chips. As I mentioned above, you can use them whole or in spears, but this is my preference. Stuff the mason jars with the chips.
2). Pour the water and vinegar into a pot or pan and bring to a boil. Once boiling, add in salt and sugar and boil until dissolved.
3) Once it has dissolved, turn off the heat and let brine sit for at least 30 minutes until completely cool.
4) Once the brine is cool, stuff dill, dill seeds, garlic, and peppercorns into the jars with the sliced cukes.
5) Pour the liquid into the jars and fill to the top. Seal the jars with the mason jar lids.
6) Pop in the fridge and let chill for at least 24 hours before eating. They taste best after sitting in the fridge for a week!
QUICK BREAD AND BUTTER PICKLE
I started making bread and butter pickles last year once I had success with the dill. When I was grocery shopping and looking at canning products, I discovered that the Ball company made their own pickling salt! Since I had experimented several times on the best dill pickle brine, I thought it would be great to use a pickling salt that was already made for making brine super tasty. I ended up using the exact recipe for bread and butter pickles off this canning salt! It's not my recipe, sp I give all the credit to the Ball Canning Company!
Here is the link to their exact recipe. You can make it for canning, but I used the "Enjoy Now" recipe.
I have also linked up the Ball Bread and Butter Picking Salt that I used. I also found their Dill pickling salt on Amazon, which you could also order and forego my recipe above. I may try this out next year!
Have you ever made pickles? What recipe do you use? I would love to hear all about it in the comments below or on Instagram!