{Homemade “Dill” Pickles} -Quick and Easy, No Canning Required

When I was pregnant I was one of the stereotypical women that craved pickles. Now, I didn’t so much crave Ice Cream (except one time I did ask The Chef to pick me up a box of Snicker’s Ice Cream bars, but that’s besides the point…) but pickles totally did the trick for me. I may or may not have polished off an entire jar in one sitting, ONCE… Maybe twice… *Side note: I still have great cholesterol and blood pressure… Just wanted to put that in…*

The Chef would get so upset that I would polish off a stinking jar at $2.99 a pop and he wouldn’t get any. He decided that he needed to figure out a cheaper solution. Hence, homemade pickles were born. It’s so incredibly easy that I was a little upset that we hadn’t been doing this from the get-go.

The pickles I like are the refrigerated, crispy, crunchy, juicy pickle. Non of this pantry stored junk that has a ton of coloring put in. That’s right, pickled CUCUMBERS.

So to start out with we’re going to need, you guessed it, cucumbers-whole. For this batch we did three.

3 Cucumbers

1 C. White distilled vinegar

3/4 C. Water

1 Tbsp. Salt

1 tsp. Red Pepper flakes

2 Garlic cloves-halved or quartered

2 Tbsp. Pickled Jalapeno (optional-depending on how hot you want, this batch had a bit of a kick but I liked it- and I’m not a huge fan of spicy)

*Note: the longer they are in the liquid, the more potent they become. So careful on the spice!

Slice the cucumbers to desired size. We did 1/8 th’s. Combine all ingredients together in a jar, large enough to fit all the cucumbers. Make sure the liquid covers the cucumbers. Let everything sit for at least 5 hours before serving. Stores up to 1 month in refrigerator.

We got the cucumbers $3 for ALL. Vinegar is cheap too and it will last quite a few batches. The rough math on all of this is $2 or less. And you get way more than the regular size jars they sell at the store for $2.99. They are delicious, they’re healthy, and you know exactly what’s going in them! i.e. No artificial coloring!!

You can always adjust the recipe to fit your taste preference. As you can see we didn’t put any dill in because The Chef likes it without. You can always add it in to make them “legit dill” pickles. We’ve made various renditions of this recipe by putting in mustard seed and black pepper corn. It was still yummy, but we decided to go with this recipe.