These dill pickles are crunchy and tangy and are perfect to eat with a hot or cold sandwich. You don’t need any canning experience to make refrigerator pickles because there’s no canning required.
Choose a cucumber with more flesh than seeds and a thick skin. But, don’t sweat it, if you grew or your store has only one type of cucumber, that’s going to be the one.
I grew Boston pickling cucumbers on Wild Woman Farmstead this year. I love them. They are large and heavy for their size, which is how you want to choose fruit. One cucumber filled up a quart canning jar!
Basic Refrigerator Cucumber Dill Pickles
Cuisine: InternationalDifficulty: Easy7
servings15
minutes5
minutesQuart canning jar with lid, saucepan spatula
Refrigerator pickles are a great, quick recipe that requires no canning equipment and little cleanup. They also stay crisp because they don’t spend any time in hot water. Use any type of cucumber you like. Boston pickling cucumbers are a very good choice because they have more flesh than seeds and have a thick skin. Persian or Kirby are also good choices.
Use as many cucumbers as you need to snugly fill the canning jar. You can adjust the recipe if you’d like to make more than one quart. Note the standard 2/3 water and 1/3 vinegar ratio.
In this recipe the pickles are not processed in a canner so they need to be stored in the refrigerator.
Ingredients
1 – 6 whole pickling cumbers
2 cups filtered water
1 cup distilled white vinegar
1 1/2 tablespoons sea, kosher, or pickling salt
2 tablespoons cane suger
1 teaspoon dill seeds
1 teaspoon mustard seeds
10 whole black peppercorns
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
4 fronds fresh dill, roughly chopped
4 cloves garlic, smashed and peeled
Directions
- Cut off the very ends of the cucumbers. Then slice into spears or thick rounds. Or, leave whole if they are small.
- Place a stainless steel 3 quart saucepan over medium high heat. Add water, vinegar, salt, sugar, dill seeds, mustard seeds, black peppercorns, and red pepper flakes and stir until salt and sugar have dissolved. Remove from heat to cool.
- Meanwhile, fill jar wth cucumbers. Add dill and garlic. Pour in room temperature brine, leaving 1/4″ headspace at the top. Tightly screw on lid.
- Refrigerate for at least 5 days. Pickles will last 6 weeks in the refrigerator, but may lose some of their crunch.
Tags
cucumbers