Bread and Butter Pickles
By Nico | August 1, 2012
Cucumbers have been doing really well in my garden. They’re pickling cucumbers, and I finally had enough to can, so yesterday I made bread and butter pickles using this recipe from Simply Recipes.
I only had the cucs on ice for 3 hours instead of 4, and I added slightly more chili pepper flakes than the recipe called for, and added the whole cloves and allspice to the jars, rather than allow them to be randomly distributed in the jars. The recipe says it will make five 500 mL jars, but I ended up with only four, and that was almost pushing it.
Next time I may play around with the spices a little more. Get adventurous. But as is, it smelled fantastic – I can’t wait to eat them. But, of course, I’ll have to. That’s the nature of pickles.
I couldn’t resist, and tried the pickled beets I made in May after a month and they weren’t quite ready. They were better two and even three months later. I’ve learned my lesson. Better to wait until they’re properly pickled and enjoy their full flavour rather than be greedy and open them too soon.
Patience is something I still need to learn.
Nico is a bibliophilic reader, writer, editor, reviewer, poet, blogger, hat wearer and kitten tickler. Nico's work has appeared most recently in Broken Pencil, The Antigonish Review, and Carousel, among other journals. Nico tweets as @plutopsyche.
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