It's been almost three years since I made pickles at home, and we've been getting some great cucumbers in our new CSA this summer.
Canning shelf-stable pickles is a lot of work, and having a food safety expert in the house, there'd be no excuse to not get it right. But the bar is a lot lower for refrigerator pickles. Kept cold in the fridge and packed in vinegar and salt, these pickles keep for months, unopened, in the back of the fridge. In fact, to my taste, they require at least three weeks to get happy in there.
The recipe's pretty straightforward: white vinegar, water, sugar, salt, onions, garlic and dill. I've always used this recipe, more or less, with minimal variations.
In addition to your standard green cucumber, we've been getting some white cucumbers, which have a great cucumber flavor, but their skin's less bitter than that of green cucumbers. We've also been getting some nice orange and red bell peppers.
I ran out of space to do the red peppers, but to the orange peppers, I added two jalapenos -- mostly for a little heat, but we'll probably eat them too, an homage to the pickled jalapenos at our favorite Seattle Asian taco place, Marination Station. The peppers got no dill, only onion and garlic, but all the cucumbers got lots of dill. Back when we had a garden in Ithaca, we'd use our own dill, but those days are gone.
Each jar has a quarter of an onion, some garlic powder (sadly, the bulb of garlic I bought was spoiled, which I didn't realize until I got home), and, for the cucumbers, dill. Then the jars are filled to the very top with a half-water, half-vinegar solution of sugar and salt. The caps tightened, when the jars cool the lid gets pulled down, so it's obvious that it's sealed.
Into the fridge they go. Updates to be posted when we crack them open.
