pickles: the waiting game!

Every summer, it’s the same old story: He makes me a couple of big batches of pickles. Refrigerator pickles, fresh and cold and so crisp and crunchy. Full of bite, because he knows I like them that way. Garlicky, because he knows I like them that way.

This morning’s trip to the market yielded this excellent starting point:

pickle stuff shopping

A coupla big bags o’ kirbies, a batch of hot red cherry peppers, and a sleeve of garlic heads. I grabbed the camera and started dancing around, because (a) I love his homemade pickles, (b) the peppers! and (c) the garlic! He made a brine with apple cider vinegar and water, mixed pickling spices, and salt, then he added the cucumbers and hot red cherry peppers, sliced in half to expose the insides.

O how hard it is to wait......

He forgot the dill in this morning’s shopping trip, so he’ll pick up a bunch later and add it to the pot. He puts a heavy weight on top of the pickles, to keep the whole thing submerged, and into the fridge it goes. Every time I open the fridge for anything, I have to see and smell the pickles but I can’t have them yet! No, Lori – don’t touch the pickles. I usually sneak one after ~24 hours, but they’re really not ready for prime eating for several days. They allegedly last for several weeks, but we don’t know the outer limit because I gorge myself on them and they disappear well before any alleged “outer limit.”

They’re very easy to make – when you create the brine, just taste it, keep tasting it, and when you like it, it’s ready. It’s not at all complicated, it’s not rocket science, it’s just fun and easy, and the result is amazing pickles.  (For a rough guideline, though, he starts by adding salt to the water until it’s very salty, then he adds vinegar until it’s very vinegary and tastes like pickle juice, and then he adds the rest — 1-2 heads of garlic (with the cloves lightly crushed or cut in half), ~7 lbs of kirbies, ~3T pickling spice. You can obviously substitute red pepper flakes for the hot peppers if you prefer.)

making my mouth water

Important edit! The next day, after he put the pickles in the fridge to … um … pickle, he tasted the brine and it just wasn’t spicy hot enough. You should do this too — taste it, taste it, taste it. You can add things if you want; he added some more cherry peppers, a couple of habaneros because we really like them hot, and lots of fresh dill and more salt, because it didn’t taste salty enough. Then the weight goes back on top, and they go back in the fridge for more pickling. I tasted the brine…..garlic, yum. Spicy, yum.

many more peppers, and lotsa dill.