Not Aunt Bee's Pickles Story. . .

The cucumbers are coming in like crazy so, the hubbs and I made some quick refrigerator pickles.  The hubbs loves his jalapenos and of course they ended up in my mild mannered dill pickles.  I  do not like sweet pickles or bread and butter pickles, I am a straight up dill pickle girl.   The hubbs got his jar with jalapenos and I got two jars, one with a little onion and one straight dill.  I just tried the jalapeno ones last night and I must admit they were awesome.   They are not too hot but have just a little kick.  I tried the ones with onion this morning, yes I eat pickles in the morning, anytime is a good time for homemade pickles.  The ones with the onion are good but, if you do not tell my hubby I said this, I will admit the jalapeno ones were the best.  The boys do not like any kind of pickles so the hubbs and I have three jars to eat and he does not like them that much either. 
Here is the recipe we used, we tweaked it to fit our personal taste, I do not remember where the original recipe came from but this is ours.

Refrigerator Pickles

We used standard mason jars:

In each Jar

3 cloves garlic peeled
3 tsp black pepper corns
1 small onion sliced
2 bunches of fresh dill
4 slices of jalapeno with seeds

Several cucumbers sliced into spears and cram as many as you can in your jar.

Liquid

2 cups water, 4 Tbsp white vinegar, 1 1/2 Tbs kosher salt.  Mix together until salt dissolved.  Pour over your cucumbers in the jar.  top with part of your dill and make sure your cucumbers are covered with liquid and put your lid on.  Invert your jar a couple times to get everything swished around and put in the fridge for 2 days.  This recipe is for one jar of pickles, you will have a little liquid left over. 

Hope you are enjoying my recipes and my stories, stay tuned. .. .

Cucumbers and More. . .

The sauerkraut is almost ready and we have started another jar.  We are truly blessed with our garden and so very thankful.  The cucumbers are now flowing like water and the hubbs did plant some picklers so, you guessed it, he now wants to make pickles.   We still are not that sure about true canning so we are going to try refrigerator pickles.  The hubbs is quite an adventurous man these days and is willing to try new things.  Youtube may be the death of us.  Yes, he found a recipe and directions on youtube.
We are using wide mouth quart sized mason jars.  We did two jars of pickles to start, so if these mess up we have messed up two jars.  I did not realize how easy refrigerator pickles could be to fix and they will last up to 3 months in the fridge.  I love pickles and have since I was little.  In our first jar I used whole cucumbers, the picklers, and in the second jar I sliced the cucumbers and did spears.  I was really surprised at how easy these are to fix, we have not tried them yet so I guess I will have to update you later on how they taste.
As with everything I do, I tweaked this recipe too.  We also have a good crop of onion so to our pickles I added onion.   Here is what we did:

In a clean quart sized mason jar we added:

3 cloves of fresh garlic crushed
3 tsp black pepper corns
1 small onion sliced (3 slices)
2 pinches of red pepper flakes
2 bunches of fresh dill  (1 bunch on the bottom and 1 bunch on the top)

place your cucumbers in your jar.
Liquid:
2 cups of water
4 Tbsp white vinegar
1 1/2 Tbsp Kosher salt

The happy little guys that get to go in the fridge.

Our jar with all the spices 

The final product to go in the fridge.

These have been in the fridge for three days and I tasted the spears yesterday and boy were they good.  If you like the Claussen pickles you will love refrigerator pickles.  I am going to try the whole pickles today and see how they turned out.  The spears are fabulous!!!!  The hubbs hit a home run with these.  We will be making more of these.