Homemade Pickles

An easy recipe for homemade pickles.

A few years ago I made pickles, didn’t like them, can’t remember where I found the recipe, bad flavor.  Too much of one spice  from the pickling spice arena just totally took over, wrestled all the other spices into submission, dominated the whole deal,  it was all I could taste, threw them out, probably just a bad recipe.

Just when you think you’ve washed your hands of making your own pickles, they seem to show up on your counter.  This past weekend at Palambo’s Roadside Market, I was drawn to  a large basket of desperate pickling cucumbers looking so needy and sporting a sign reading  “due to recent hail storms, pickles by the bushel may not be available this year”.  I now have a counter full of pickling cucumbers that have to be pickled.

I published a family cookbook a few years ago so decided to take a look there for a pickle recipe. Sure enough I found a Refregerator Pickle Recipe submitted by my cousin Pam. Pam lives in Hutchinson, Kansas.  That’s where all of us in our family grew up.  You see, my mom had two sisters, Alice and Lois.  We all lived very close together and all of us cousins were like brothers and sisters.  Always together with lots of family occasions to gather and celebrate with really good food.  Good times.  I called my mom and she thinks this is the recipe she used to make also.

Back to the pickles.  They are in jars,  in the refrigerator and now we have to wait 5 days for a test taste.  “Tick-Tock Bill”  (my favorite line from “True Blood”) hence my new name for these pickles.

So for now, here’s the recipe and I’ll report back in five days

Pam’s Refrigerator Pickles hereinafter referred to as “Tick-Tock Pickles”

• 4 C. Sugar
• 4 C. Vinegar
• 1/2 C. Salt
• 1 1/2 t. celery seed
• 1 1/2 t. mustard seed
• 3 medium onions thinly sliced

Slice scrubbed unpeeled cucumbers to fill a gallon jar

Without heating, mix vinegar, sugar and spices, stirring until sugar is dissolved.  Pour over cucumber and onion slices.  Refrigerate for 5 days before eating.  Keeps in refrigerator for months.

I didn’t have a gallon jar, so used smaller  jars and just divided all ingredients evenly.  And you know me, I can’t leave well enough alone.  I love the Zesty Bread and Butter slices from the store, so threw in some red pepper flakes in a couple of the jars.   This was so easy that I had to read the recipe a couple of times to make sure I wasn’t forgetting something.

Note:  these aren’t officially “canned”.  They haven’t gone through the hot water bath process, they are just in canning jars.  I’ll report back in five days.