Making garden fresh quick pickles
✦ Learn to make quick refrigerator pickles from home grown cucumbers and fresh herbs from the garden 🥒🌿 ✦
If you've been following my blog, you'll know that one of my very favorite things in the world is growing my own food, and preparing fresh meals from scratch with the food and herbs I grow.
Making home made pickles from scratch just happens to tick off both of those boxes - so pickling season is my favorite!
And lucky for us, making quick pickles is nice and easy, and can yield some delicious pickles as quick as one day after canning!
✦ the recipe ✦
You'll need 8 pint canning jars, a pot, some water, 4 large pickling cucumbers or 16 small pickling cucumbers, apple cider vinegar, pickling salt, black peppercorns, mustard seeds, 1 small Vidalia onion, 1 garlic bulb, red pepper flakes, a touch of granulated sugar or local honey, and some sprigs of fresh dill and sage from the garden.
✦ Begin by rinsing off your cucumbers and slicing them into chips or spears, depending on your preference. For us, we use large pickling cucumbers so about half a cucumber would fit per jar, leaving an inch or so before the neck of the jar
✦ Next, chop up your onion into spears or cubes and put about 1/4 cup into each jar on top of the pickles
✦ Rinse your garden sage and dill and place 2 sprigs of dill and a few ground up leaves of sage, as well as a pinch of red pepper flake per jar
✦ Measure out 3 cups of apple cider vinegar, 3 cups of water, 12 cloves of smashed garlic, 1 cup of pickling salt, 2 teaspoons of granulated sugar or honey, 2 tablespoons of black peppercorns, 2 tablespoons of mustard seeds and add all of them to a pot on low to simmer until the salt and sugar are fully dissolved
✦ Allow the brine to cool to warm and pour over each jar of cucumbers, leaving a bit of room at the top and ensuring the spices make their way equally into each jar. Screw on the lids and give them a good shake to distribute the spices
✦ Your work is now done! Place the jars in the refresh and wait at least 24 hours before enjoying! These pickles are great on a sandwich or along with a delicious summer lunch.
Feel free to add more or less of certain spices to your taste. We tend to love a garlicy, sharp tasting pickle - but you can easily add more sweetener and less garlic for a more sweet and mild pickle! Enjoy!
What other recipes would you like to see? Thank you for reading!