Love the thought of homemade pickles but short on time? You can make a gallon jar of these delicious sweet sour pickles in the morning and enjoy them by mid-afternoon!
This post contains affiliate links for your shopping convenience.
I grew up in a family that had a vegetable garden long before it was trendy. It was just what we did every summer. It wasn’t until sometime in high school that I realized having a vegetable garden was the exception rather than the rule, at least among most of the people I encountered.
One of the things I looked forward to each summer was when my mom would get the big gallon-sized glass jar down from the far-reaches of the closet. It could only mean one thing: we were drowning in home-grown cucumbers and it was time to make pickles.
These are not your traditional dill pickles. These are sweet and sour, sliced pickles that will be ready to eat a few hours after you eat them.
My mom tried to make traditional dill pickles over the years but they never quite had the intense flavor we all wanted. As an adult I’ve gotten as far as buying pickling spices, but the time involved in making and canning traditional dill pickles makes me give up before even getting started.
These pickles are not canned; like the name says, they are “refrigerator pickles”. So you store them in a big jar in the fridge and take out a serving or two whenever the mood strikes.
My 6-year-old son is convinced he doesn’t like pickles. But he loves cucumbers and devours them with ranch on a regular basis. He was wary of these pickles when I first made them. He agreed to try one as long as they “weren’t pickles”. I assured him they weren’t and he took a taste, declared them “Delicious!” and asked for more.
This is also a great recipe for kids to help with– as long as you supervise the use of knives and/or the food processor of course.
Ingredients:
1, One-gallon glass jar, keep in mind that a metal lid will rust over time. My jar has a plastic lid, but I have seen some with wire-bail glass lids as well.
7 Large cucumbers, sliced thin (or enough to fill a one-gallon jar)
1 Large onion, sliced thin
1 Green pepper, sliced thin (optional)
2 Tablespoons Salt
2 Cups Sugar
1 Cup White vinegar
Directions:
- Make sure jar is clean and dry. Slice cucumbers and add to jar until it is half-full. I use my food processor’s thin slicing attachment to make this step go quickly. You want the slices to be about 1/8 inch thick. Thicker slices will work, but it will take longer than a day to be ready to eat.
- Add half of the sliced onion and green pepper (if using) on top of the sliced cucumbers.
- Sprinkle cucumbers and onion with half of the salt (1 Tablespoon) and half of the sugar (1 Cup). Add half the vinegar (1/2 Cup).
- Fill remainder of jar with more sliced cucumbers and repeat steps 2 and 3.
- Put lid on the jar and place in refrigerator. Pickles are ready to eat in about 5 hours.
Within a day or so you’ll notice that the contents of the jar have settled quite a bit and there is a lot of liquid in the jar, though the recipe calls for no addition of liquid besides the vinegar. The salt and sugar draw a lot of water out of the cucumber slices over time.
If you’re looking to reduce your sugar intake, I’ve substituted Splenda (sucralose) for half the sugar in this recipe. I tried it once with Truvia (stevia) and it had a strange metallic aftertaste to me– which is apparently not unusual for stevia, but try a small batch for yourself and see what you think.
If you liked this post, please subscribe to Grounded and Growing today and receive your copy of “15 Tips to Become a '15 Minute Gardener'” so you can spend less time working ON your garden and more time enjoying being IN your garden.! It’s absolutely free. When you join the Grounded and Growing community, you’ll finally take the garden off your “To-Do” list and allow yourself time to enjoy your garden and savor the peace and serenity there. I tell subscribers about new posts as soon as I hit ‘publish’ and send weekly-ish updates on what’s going on in my garden– good, bad AND ugly.
All Rights Reserved. © 2019 Jennifer Schultz Nelson.
Gave it a try with a small mason jar! Can’t wait to give them a try!