Grandma Beverly's Refrigerator Pickles

My grandparents had a huge vegetable garden so homemade pickles were part of every summer.  In the past week I have picked 6 cucumbers and it looks like I will have tons more soon!  What better way to keep cucumbers from going to waste than to make homemade pickles?  Here is my Grandma Beverly's recipe for homemade refrigerator pickles.

Grandma Beverly's Refrigerator Pickles

 Ingredients

• Cucumbers
• Garlic cloves
• Onions
• Fresh Dill
• Mustard seeds
• White vinegar
• Salt
• Sugar

Procedure

Clean quart sized canning jars and lids in hot water.  Make sure to use an unused lid because you need it to make a seal with the jar.  This recipe makes enough liquid for one quart sized jar.  Clean cucumbers and trim off the ends.  You can leave you cucumbers whole or slice them into any size that you like.  This time I did a mixture of spears and slices.

Pack each jar with 2-4 garlic cloves, 1 small onion sliced, fresh dill, mustard seeds and cucumbers. Set the jar on top of a towel.  Mixing a glass container with boiling liquid on top of a cold counter top can cause the glass the shatter.  The towel will reduce the temperature difference.

Mix 2 cups of water, 3/4 cup of white vinegar, 2 tbsp sugar and 2 tbsp salt.  Bring to a boil and pour into the jar over all of the other ingredients.  Fill the jars almost to the top (leave 1/4" of space at the top).  Cool too room temperature and then refrigerate.

Pickles are ready to eat in 24 hours and will last up to a year in the refrigerator.

For one quart sized jar, I used 3 1/2 cucumbers that were originally about 6" long.  Unfortunately grocery store cucumbers will not work for this recipe because of their waxy skin.  Homegrown cucumbers work the best.  I used 4 garlic cloves (cut into large pieces), 1 small onion sliced, and 5 sprigs of fresh dill.  I didn't measure the mustard seeds but I would guess about 1 tsp.  This is one of those recipes where adding "some" is a measurement.  It's a hard recipe to mess up so don't stress too much about the details. 

You can experiment with the amount of onion, garlic, dill and mustard seed to see how much you prefer.

Happy Cooking!

Jenny