Our cucumber vines are bearing many fruit. So many that, despite eating the cucumbers in salads every day, we still have a lot. It must be pickle time!
Today, I picked 8 pounds of cucumbers and processed them into 8 quarts of sweet pickles. Recipe and procedure below the fold…
Brine
- 4 cups sugar
- 8 cups white vinegar
- 8 cups water
- 2 tablespoons canning & pickling salt
- 4 tablespoons pickling spice
Procedure
Wash and scrub the cucumbers to get the dirt and spines off.
Using a mandolin (because who’s got time to do this with a knife?) slice the cucumbers.
Combine the brine ingredients in a large pot and bring them to a boil. While waiting for water to boil, wash the jars and pack them with cucumber slices.
Fill the jars with brine, leaving the standard 1 inch of head space. Water process them for 10 minutes. Our canner can hold 7 quarts at once, so I opted to do this in two batches. There was some brine left over, so I canned it in another jar to save for the next batch of pickles.
The Quintana-Beitzel Coprosperity Sphere 