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Homemade pickles are really delicious but they require a lot of special cleaning
equipment you need jar lifters and special tongs
and it's hot work to be sterilizing jars and standing over water bath canner for
pickles
you can get the same delicious result by making refrigerator pickles when you're
inundated with cucumbers from your garden
or at the farmers market now to choose something to put them
in you can use jars quart pint or even gallon jars whatever you have
room in your refrigerator for you can also use plastic bowls or containers
that have a tight lid
these are not vacume sealed so you can use any kind of jar
lid it can be the two-part canning jar but whatever
can make a good seal and then use any fresh Chrisp
cucumbers that you have you can use a slicing cucumber the burp list type
a pickling or just any kind a cucumber that you have
there's no need to peal the cucumbers for this just slice them thinly you can use
a mandolin or a food processor to slice them
more quickly washer jars well but then you don't have to sterilize them
and then you can add different things to flavor the pickles to the jar so
I like to use is a couple of cloves of garlic some red pepper flakes
dill seed peppercorns you could put mustard seed and you can and peppers if
you like a hot pickle
now you can use any kind of pepper you like jalapenos serrano's
if you slice the peppers you'll get really hot vinegar
you can put the peppers in whole for just a slight flavor of
pepper and then you can punch the peppers with a toothpick to give just a
little bit more heat
to your pickles and you can check to see how how much you like
of the heat in there now the dill you
hopefully save some fresh dill from your spring garden
is usually the dill is gone before the cucumbers are ready but you can buy
fresh
really nice fresh fragrant dill seed too. for the vinegar
I like to use natural apple cider vinegar you want to make sure it's made
from apples because of in its
white vinegar thats got caramel coloring and flavoring rice wine vinegar
is also nice to have a very mild flavor so you really taste the pickles not the
vinegar
and you can add sugar to taste now I usually just put
a tablespoon or a less
a tablespoon for a quart jar or maybe half a that for a pint jar
some people will put up to a cup in each jar but that's too sweet for me
and you'll use a non-reactive pan to cook the brine so you're going to heat
the vinegar the water and
extra dilly if you want that I like a really dilly pickles so I usually put
dill in the brine heat that just to a boil
let it cool a bit and then you're gonna put that over your sliced or
split cucumbers in the jar
seal it up let it cool for a little while before you put it in the
refrigerator
and then the flavors going to be great by the next day but they'll actually
keep getting more of the flavor as you
leave them in the refrigerator and they'll keep for several months you can
use the same technique for green beans okra cauliflower or for carrots
for more recipes on making ice box pickles and different things you can add
check out our website at KLRU .org/ CTG
and for backyard basics I'm Tricia shirey thanks for joining us