Monday, November 24, 2008

Pickles!!

Making your own pickles is easy and cheap. It hardly even counts as cooking it's so easy. I get cucumbers 3/$1 at Save and Prosper, the Russian market. This week they were huge so I paid 5o cents each. Look how big this thing is (it's next to a sheet of paper to show you the size)!


All you need is jars, and probably you can just use old mayo jars if you don't want to go buy the expensive canning kind. So here's what you do:

Mix together in a saucepan:
1 cup distilled white vinegar
1 tablespoon salt
2 cups white sugar
Up to 1 tablespoon each mustard seed and celery seed, depending on your taste

Boil that mixture for a few minutes until the sugar is completely dissolved. While that cooks, slice up some cucumbers and fill your jars with them, like this:

When your vinegar mixture is done, just pour it into the jars over the cucumbers, screw on the lid and stick them in the fridge! I don't know how long they last because no matter how many I make, they are always gone pretty fast, but it seems like they should last a good long while. This batch was made with 2 smaller cucumbers and 1-1/2 bigger ones. If you buy the spices at Sharp Shopper for 89 cents, the grand total is less than 50 cents a jar for delicious, homemade pickles!!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't know the exact reference, but one of the earliest uses of the word from which we get "baptize" (immerse) was an ancient pickle recipe. You baptized the stuff you were pickling.

Now go and impress your friends...

Laura Saufley Photography said...

My Granny makes the best sweet pickles but her recipe takes days and days! She soaks them and drains them, then soaks them again. It's totally worth it though because they are delicious! I told her once we move to NC next year I want her to teach me how to make them!