I have two cucumber plants that are producing way faster than I can eat them. I'm a little cucumbered out. I'd like to make pickles, but I don't have any fancy canning equipment. I've googled around and almost all recipes I see require a ton of sugar or granulated Splenda.

I'm probably going to try this recipe, unless any of you folks have any experience and/or suggestions?



There's only one comment to that post from someone who actually made them.

TIA for any guidance!

Good lord no, go for a recipe for dill pickles and if it calls for sugar, omit it. I make all my pickles dill and don't add any sugar to any of it. They don't requre anything special either. Refrigerator pickles don't have to be canned so just a container with a lid and your good to go. A few spices, water and vinager.

This is what I learned about dill pickles last summer.

My nephew makes pickles which I really like. He showed me how he makes them, without a water bath. (I would put a link here but I can't find it at the moment.) I was kind of scared to use his method, because I'd learned it's not safe. The federal guidelines say you must water bath for 10 minutes. After lots of reading I decided to go with it -- my logic is, you're not going to get botulism growing in that much vinegar, and botulism is the scary thing about canning. Now there might be other things growing in there, lol, but they aren't going to kill you... probably. Anyway there are credible sources who say this method is safe, but in general 'experts' shy away from contradicting the federal guidelines. So you will find plenty of people who tell you it's not safe.

Anyway I made batches of both types -- water bathed and non water bathed. The water bathed pickles are mushy and really kind of gross. The others are crunchy and tasty. So I am once again ignoring federal guidelines... oh no!! These aren't refrigerator pickles, I've stored them in my pantry all year. So far so good.

The other thing I learned is, there are lots of people posting really dangerous canning recipes out there. I kept reading, "my grandmother did it her whole life this way and on one ever died". What you have to remember is, these cases are really over represented, because the grandmothers who weren't so lucky didn't leave progeny to warn us about their granny's dangerous canning methods.

Awesome, thanks so much! I was afraid of deviating from recipes because of food safety.

If you soak the pickles in ice water for a couple hours it helps to keep them crispy after Water Bathing. I prefer to do pickle wedges instead of whole pickles.

Alton Brown did a whole show on refrigerator pickles. Here's one of the recipes: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/...-bs-recipe.html

Here's a link to more about that episode: http://www.goodeatsfanpage.com/GEFP/index.htm

Thanks a bunch!!

Okay, I have to confess, I'm not even a big fan of pickles. I don't like them plain out of a jar. I only like them combined with some combination of meat/lettuce/tomatoes/cheese/mustard. Is it fair to say that homemade pickles are supposed to be way different from store-bought? The same way homemade salsa tastes nothing like commercial, or homemade cookies taste nothing like commercial?

This is the recipe I ended up using, and they turned out... weird? They almost seem like regular cucumbers with some vinegar, salt and spice added to them. Then again, I was using slicer cukes. I read that they don't pickle well. Next year, I'll plant some proper pickling cukes, and these huge-a$$ 'Fanfare' slicing cukes? Well, don't leave your car doors unlocked at church.

But it's only been three days, so I'll try them again in a week more like the Alton Brown recipe.

Maybe I'll get up the guts to try some lacto-fermented paleo pickles some time!

That's kind of what refrigerator pickles are. They will last a long time in the fridge though. I don't really consider pickles to be pickles until they've been in the jar for 3 or 4 months. I've never made fermented dills, I've heard it's easy though.

As an update, I had some of these pickles today and they're much better. SO agrees. This would be three weeks later.

I'd call this a keeper because it's so inexpensive and easy.