This has been turn your cucumbers into pickles week at our house. As I posted
here, we're very excited to be doing our first old fashioned brined dill pickles. We just need a place to put it other than in the middle of the kitchen counter. Anyone want to come over and help us get the butcher block moved in from the barn?? ;)
Having this process under our belts we moved on to our favorite bread and butter pickles. I was able to process one batch with a left over seasoning packet from last year, but needed more to keep going. I had no idea that it would be so difficult to find! After driving and calling all over town, I found the closest seasoning wasn't going to be delivered for 2 weeks! Too long to wait for the pile of English Cukes accumulating in the fridge. So I began to research making them from scratch.
We do so much from scratch, I guess I never thought of the seasoning mix as cheating. I went out and grabbed the few seasonings I was missing and began this morning. Interestingly, every recipe called to brine the cukes with onions for 3 hours then drain them before placing in jars and filling with the hot liquid mixture. I'm interested to see how this process affects the taste and texture of the pickles. So often we take the 'short cuts' to make things a bit easier for our busy lives. But, the ten minutes to put the veggies in brine didn't interfere. Them sitting around doing their thing for 3 hours really doesn't stop me from accomplishing other tasks. And you know what? Not only do I know the source of every ingredient, I'll bet these will taste a ton better too!
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