Refrigerator Dill Pickles

This recipe comes from www.cooks.com

I love dill pickles, and since we had cucumbers running out of our ears this summer, I decided to can some.  The problem is I can’t stand home canned pickles because they get so mushy.  I like my pickles good and crunchy.  I had heard that there was an easy way to make crunchy pickles so I looked it up.  This was the best recipe I found and was easy for an amateur canner like me to handle.  It also made delicious and perfectly crispy pickles.  The only downside is that they cannot be stored at room temperature and must stay in the refrigerator.

What You Need

fresh pickling cucumbers (for those of you who don’t know, don’t use the big salad cucumbers you get at the grocery store, you want a real pickling cucumber–the smaller bumpy kind.)

1 large bunch of fresh dill weed

1 large onion

whole garlic cloves

Pickling Solution

6 cups water

2 cups vinegar

1/2 cup canning salt (I didn’t have any canning salt and just used my Redmond real salt–worked great.)

1/2 tsp alum

Before boiling your pickling solution, wash the cucumbers, garlic, and dill, and slice the onion.  For small to medium cucumbers, I pickled these whole, for the large cucumbers, I cut these into slices, either cross-ways or length-ways for sandwich slices.  Put whole cucumbers and sliced in different jars as the wholes will take longer to pickle.  Boil your jars, lids, and rims before stuffing with cucumbers to make sure they are sterile.  Stuff your jars (size of the jar doesn’t matter, just pick what you like) with cucumbers, a sprig or two of dill, a couple onion slices, and a couple garlic cloves.  Once you have all of the jars stuffed and ready, boil the pickling solution.  Carefully pour or ladle boiling solution over pickles and immediately seal.  Turn hot jars upside down to help lids seal.  Be careful when pouring the solution, the vinegar steam doesn’t feel very good in the eyes.  One batch of pickling solution fills about 6 pint jars.  Let the jars sit upside down on the counter for 3-4 hours and then refrigerate.  They are ready to eat in 2-4 days.  Don’t be afraid to vary the amount of dill, garlic, etc. to your own taste, or even add different spices.