yay, tacos!

One of our favorite snacks around here is a small bowl of pickles. You get a small serving of salty and sweet flavors without a whole lot of crap or unnecessary ingredients. Between the two of us, we tend to go through a big jar of them in a little over a week. Bread & Butter pickles are our favorite so it worked out that it was time to experiment with AB’s B&B’s.

I’ve read about making pickles at home before and there tends to be two standard ways of doing it.

The cheat way: Find a bottle of pickles you like. Eat them all and save the jar and pickling liquid. Chop up your cucumbers, dump them in and store for at least a week.

The homemade way: Whip up a batch of your own pickling liquid. Chop up your cucumbers, dump them in and store for at least a week.

As you can tell, neither one is difficult. The homemade method, however, provides you better opportunity to tweak the flavors to your perfection. And of course, it’s always better to know exactly what it is that’s in your food (or pickling liquid).

You probably already have most of the things you need.

The hardest part about this whole process was finding pickling spices. Our local grocery just doesn’t seem to carry it. We ended up going to a nearby spice store and getting a small jar of it for just a few dollars. Beyond that, we already had everything we needed except for the cucumbers themselves.

Of course, the most important part of any pickle is what the pickle will look like. Bread and butter pickles are traditionally small, thin rounds. I’ve done these a few times now and while it doesn’t technically change the taste – everyone knows that pickles with ridge-cuts are just inherently better. I just wish I could figure out why no matter how I use my mandolin slicer, I can never get a straight even cut every time. Most of my pickles have a thick edge and a thin edge. Oh well.

Pickles with ridges > pickles without ridges.

For our pickles, we reuse old pickle jars. The recipe says to use spring-top containers. These work just fine. Dump the cucumbers and the onion into the jar. I usually put the onion on the bottom and then the cucumbers on top. It doesn’t matter though – over time, they’ll all mix together. I also use about half of the onion called for in the recipe. That’s just a rule in our house: half the onion, double the garlic. It’s almost universal. Depending on the size of your jar (we use two different sized ones), you may run out of room for the cucumbers. It’s OK. Just hold on to those ones that don’t fit.

Don't worry if you can't fit them all in right now.

Combine the rest of the ingredients in a pot and bring them all to a boil. This is where I ran into a little “uh-oh” the first time. The recipe calls for pickling spice plus a handful of other spices/ingredients. The pickling spice I used, however, says that you should just combine it directly with the liquid – no other spices needed. In fact, examining the ingredient list (or just looking at the pickling spice) reveals that it already includes most of the additional spices. I decided to just treat the pickling spice as though it didn’t have all those extra ingredients mixed in. Yours may or may not.

Alternately, you could just cheat and use the liquid from storebought pickles. Where's the fun in that?

Once the liquid comes to a boil, you simmer it for a few minutes and then pour it over the cucumbers and onions. At this point, you’re supposed to let the whole jar cool down to room temperature and then top off with any remaining liquid. I almost never have any extra liquid, but I do still sometimes have leftover cucumbers. As the whole jar cools down, you’ll start seeing that the cucumbers start absorbing the liquid and compressing – leaving more room for more cucumbers. Go ahead and throw whatever you have left in. Feel free to use your hand (or a wooden spoon) to just push the cucumbers down if necessary.

Pour the liquid over the cucumbers/onions.

As they cool, the pickles absorb the liquid, leaving room for more cucumbers if you have any left over from before.

It’ll take about an hour and a half for the jar to cool down completely. Throw the cap on, wipe the outside down (you’ve probably spilled some pickling liquid) and put it in the fridge for about a week. Since it takes a week for these to finish and we go through them in about a week, I’ve started just doing two jars of pickles – staggered out by a week or so. By the time one jar is finished being eaten, the other jar is done pickling.

AB’s B&B’sRating:

This is a great base recipe for bread & butter pickles. The method is easy and active work time is about 20 minutes. We found that the original recipe was a little too sweet and needed more salt. It calls for “a pinch” of kosher salt. I use three or four pinches and they’re perfect for us. Since I’ve started making these, Emily no longer asks for half of my pickle when I get one with a burger at a restaurant. No other pickle compares.

In the end, the price of a buying a jar of pickles versus making one comes out to be pretty much a wash – and it can be difficult for that week while the pickles are pickling, but it’s totally worth it. At least, once you tweak the recipe to your liking. Me? I’m thinking of throwing in some red pepper flakes into the next batch.

After a week, you've got delicious homemade pickles.