I found some beautiful fresh Persian cucumbers yesterday and made a full jar of my 3-hour bread & butter pickles. Today, there’s only half a jar left. You can make pickles using the traditional small Kirby cuces but Persians work just fine too, and they are available all year round. Mediterranean markets usually have the best ones. So today’s lunch will be a salmon sandwich on my multi-grain no knead bread with a bowl of these refrigerator pickles on the side, and a whole wheat double chocolate chip cookie for dessert. I should have just enough homemade pickles left for tomorrow. Click here for the recipe. – Jenny Jones
This is the best time to make pickles because cucumbers are in season. I make my 3-hour bread & butter pickles with either Kirby cucumbers (the pickling bumpy kind) or Persian cucumbers (seedless with a smoother skin) and today I found some beautiful fresh Persian cucumbers that were fresh and crisp and bright green.
So no matter what kind of cuces you use, these three-hour pickles could not be any easier. They really are ready to eat in three hours! All you need is the cucumbers, some sliced onion, white vinegar and three spices besides sugar and salt. Sometimes I slice the cuces thinly, other times a little thicker and they are always crisp and tangy.
I’m making them for the Memorial Day weekend to have with my fall-off-the-bone ribs and potato salad… or with a salmon sandwich.. or just as a snack right out of the jar. I love these pickles!
Click here for the recipe, and Happy Memorial Day to everyone. – Jenny Jones
I forgot how easy it is to make homemade pickles. It was a lot easier than putting together that jig saw puzzle they’re sitting on. The pickles took 5 minutes. The puzzle? Three months!
These are bread & butter pickles, which are also called refrigerator pickles, and now is a good time to make them. Cucumbers are at their best during summer and it’s the Kirby cucumber (not the Persian one) that is best for pickles. I sliced the cuces super thin this time and they are so soft they bend but they’re still crispy, probably because I left the skin on. If you peel the cucumbers, the pickles are a lot softer.
I also put more sugar in this time and I found I like the pickles a little sweeter. So I added a note to the recipe that you can use more sugar if you like sweeter pickles. Don’t be freaked out by the amount of sugar: it’s 1/2 to 3/4 of a cup because remember, the sugar mostly stays in the water.
So make some pickles. If you start now, they’ll be ready to eat in 3 hours. Click here for the recipe. – Jenny Jones
My easy refrigerator pickles are ready to eat in 3 hours! And it can’t get any easier than this. Just heat up the marinade and pour it over the cucumbers. Wait three hours and enjoy! There’s no canning here, not long process, just a simple, easy recipe for these delicious, tangy pickles. When I didn’t have all the spices, I made my pickles with just the salt and sugar and they were still good but they definitely have more depth of flavor with the added spices.
Crispy pickles are my favorite and I find that leaving the peel on makes a much crispier pickle. If you like them soft and more bendable, just peel the cucumbers first. Also, I’m a big fan of red onions and besides looking pretty and being sweeter, they make some great eating along with the pickles.
They call them bread and butter pickles because during the great depression, people ate cucumber sandwiches, made on bread and butter with cucumbers that were easy to grow. At the end of the growing season they pickled the remaining cuces to last the rest of the year and continued to make the new “pickled” cucumber sandwiches on bread and butter.
Cucumbers are best in spring and summer so now is a good time to make your own pickles, seeing how easy it is and all. Even an amateur cook can’t mess this up. Click here for the recipe. – Jenny Jones
