Hello garden gals and guys!! It’s been a minute since my last post, but I’m back and I come bearing a recipe. My cucumber plants are not doing as well as they usually do this time of year. I have a ton of flowers but so far only about four cucumbers. I think some hand pollination may be in order. But I digress.
My oldest son LOVES pickles. I really didn’t feel up to going through the whole canning process especially given the heat of the past couple of weeks. But someone I follow on Instagram shared a recipe for pickles that is quick and easy. So if you have a lot of cucumbers from your garden or the farmers market (or the grocery store), you can follow this recipe and have cucumbers in a few hours! Yes, a few hours. But I’m going to let mine sit overnight.
They are called refrigerator pickles and I can’t wait to see how they taste. Here’s what you need:
What you see are a few canning jars, 3 or 4 cucumbers (one of mine was starting to get a little yellow so I needed to hurry and use it. It’s still crunchy and yummy…yes I tasted it), vinegar of your choice, salt, and dill spice.
For the vinegar you can use any vinegar flavor you like. I used my pickling vinegar.
So, begin by cutting the ends off the cukes. Then you slice the cukes in half lengthwise and then slice those pieces again lengthwise. I wanted to make mine short to fit in the jars, so after I cut the pieces lengthwise, I sliced all those long pieces in half. So they looked like this:
It’s a little hard to see the cuts, but they’re there. Next, I put a tablespoon of salt and two tablespoons of dill in the bottom of each jar.
Then I took the slices and packed them in.
Then I poured the vinegar into the jars to cover the pickles. It’s hard to see but the jars below are filled with vinegar.
The final step is to put the lid on nice and tight. Then give them a good shake to mix the salt and dill around the pickles.
Now put them in the refrigerator for a few hours and enjoy! As I said, I am going to let mine sit overnight before I give them the taste test.
That’s it! Easy peasy lemon-squeazy! Or should I say vinegar-squeazy? 🙂
So the next time you want some pickles you can take your cukes right from your own garden or your local farmers market and make them yourself!
Until next time garden gals and guys….
Happy farming!
