Chad Groetsch
A healthy cucumber plant is a prolific producer. You know you can’t eat all of them, right? That means you need to do one of two things. Either sneak over to your neighbors and leave bags of cukes on their porch and run away or pickle them. Sure, there are breeds of cucumbers specifically for pickling, but all cucumbers can be preserved in jars. This just happens to be our down and dirty way of making a quick two quarts of dill pickles. Feel free to scale this recipe as you need for larger quantities.
Quick Dill Pickle Spears or Slices
You can't ever eat all the cucumbers, so here is a quick pickle recipe that will keep your harvest around for as long as it takes to eat them.
Ingredients
- 3 # cucumbers
- 6 cloves of minced garlic
- 4 tsp dill
- 1 tsp red pepper flakes
- 2 cups cider vinegar
- 2 cups water
- 2 tbsp pickling salt
Instructions
- Start by making sure you have two cleaned and sanitized quart jars.
- Wash, dry, and cut cucumbers into spears or slices.
- Add 1/2 of the garlic, dill, and pepper flakes into each jar.
- Pack cucumbers into jar. With spears you might want to tip jar and switch between thick and thin ended spears at the bottom of jar.
- In a pot mix together the vinegar, water, and salt. This is your brine.
- Bring your brine to a boil and pour into jars up to 1/2 inch from the top.
- Remove excess bubbles by gentle tapping the jar on the counter.
- Place lid and band onto the jar and boil in a canner for 10 minutes.
Notes
As the jar cools it will seal. If not, something when wrong. You don’t have to have a pressure canner for this, just a deep stock pot that will allow water to come up over the lid is necessary.
