Easy Pickled Cucumbers

It's pickling season. This Cucumber Pickle was made from a couple of the largest cucumbers I have ever seen, and were surprisingly very crispy and sweet. Even cucumbers which look as if they are on steroids, and these did, can still be pickled or the smallest ones as well.  How versatile is the common cucumber?

 Some varieties of Cucumbers don't last very long in the vegetable crisper, so they are perfect candidates for pickling, where you will have them for a couple of months when refrigerated. Their size doesn't matter. Cucumbers will be crisper when pickled if you don't peel them ( I didn't), and softer if you do. I also like to remove the seeds. Refrigerate your pickles straight away, and they will be ready to eat in 3 hours. 

I only pickled mine a few days ago, and whilst some sources say they are best eaten in two weeks, pickling friends of mine are still happy with them at 2 months under refrigeration.

Let's pickle:

Ingredients:

1 cup water

1/2 cup sugar (use 2/3-3/4 cup if you like them sweeter or even lessen it a bit for less sweet)

1 teaspoon salt

1 cup White Wine Vinegar or distilled White Vinegar

1/4 teaspoon each of coriander seed, yellow mustard seed, and celery seed

1/2 cup thinly sliced onion

770 g of firm crisp cucumbers or about 4 firm pickling cucumbers ( whatever you can get your hands on depending on where you live, English, Persian, Kirby)

Method:

This quantity should fill one 720 ml/24 oz. glass mason jar, or a 1 litre jar if that's all you can get. You can also use the equivalent of spaghetti sauce bottles for bottling.

I like my cucumber pickles without all of the seeds in them. But if you like to see all of those soft white seeds floating around the bottle, leave them in. Cut the cucumbers from one end to the other, and use a melon baller or a spoon to scrape out the seeds. Slice into half moons, quite thinly.

Place water, sugar and salt in a small saucepan. Heat and stir until sugar and salt are dissolved.

Pour the warm water into a large glass jar.

Add the vinegar and the three spices and seeds.

Add cucumber slices and onions in alternating layers if you can to distribute them throughout the jar.

Cover and refrigerate for at least 3 hours.

Thanks to JennyCanCook.com and a few other sources for some background information on how to best pickle cucumbers. I wasn't sure if my cucumbers on steroids would pickle well, but they've been brilliant. This recipe worked beautifully, and the cucumbers are delicious, just sweet enough as well for our taste.

I go quite light on the amount of seeds and spices I add to my pickles, because I have problems eating seeds. Some picklers love to add heaps of seeds and spices to their pickling jars, for the look every much as the taste I think. It's not necessary for flavour, the amount of seeds I added was enough.

Our Worm Farm doesn't like cucumbers:

We love cucumbers but it appears our worm farm doesn't, who would have thought. These cucumbers came from our very good friends vegetable garden. I went around and harvested them while they are on holidays, at their request, and came home with a bag full of huge cucumbers many of which I gave away, and saved just enough for pickling and salads. Mr. HRK also fed some chopped up to our hungry worm farm, but we won't do that again. We could tell this morning that the worm farm was too wet, and because of that had attracted flies and and unwelcome grubs. Not very nice. Blame it on the cucumbers. Anyway, thankfully we found this early, and Mr. HRK is onto it using dry shredded paper and grass clippings to dry the compost out.  There might have been something else he used as well. It's never dull around here. The worms have been actively producing enough worm juice to fertilise our vegetables and other plants, so hopefully they will be a lot happier tomorrow. 

Do you have a worm farm, and have you had any problems with managing it?

Happy pickling and thanks for dropping by,

Pauline