Refrigerator Pickles

In my new location Next to the Middle of Nowhere, the grocery store is over 20 miles away.  It's the same chain, Smith's, that I shopped at previously in Reno, and while it might lack a bit in the variety of offerings, this place knows how to discount!  See, the previous location serviced a mostly lower income population, and as often happens in lower income areas, the grocery stores do not discount as well as they do in higher income areas.  My husband always found much better deals at the Smith's that he shopped at near his work (a much higher income area) than I could ever find at the one by our house.  

This new store has the better discounts, and on top of that, the produce manager seems to be especially selective and discounts all kinds of things, sometimes quite a few days before the sell-by date.  And s/he's very particular about the cucumbers and zucchini.  Each time I have shopped, there have been several bags of discounted cucumbers and zucchini, with usually half a dozen for 99 cents.  Of the at least three dozen that I have purchased in the last month, only one cucumber was unusable.

Anyway, we ran out of dill pickles for my husband's lunches last week.  I'm pretty sure I have some packed somewhere.  I recalled reading in The Tightwad Gazette many years back about a reader tip for saving money on pickles.  If I remembered correctly, all a person had to do was slice up a fresh cucumber and put it in the empty jar of pickle juice.  In a few days, you would have pickles.  So we gave that a try.  After three or four days, the cucumber slices weren't very pickle-like.  So I added some salt, vinegar, dill, and pickling spice and waited a few more days.  The result was pretty respectable, especially for having started with store-brand pickles.  

So then I got to thinking that there must be a recipe somewhere for making pickles with fresh cucumbers and just putting them in the fridge, totally bypassing the water bath canning.  I'm not opposed to canning--I love it--but my first attempts at making pickles ten years ago didn't warrant any second attempts.  

In all the preparations we have made food storage-wise, we haven't planned on having a whole lot of refrigeration.  We plan for some, naturally, to protect my husband's insulin, but we anticipate that when things truly fall apart, we will not be able to refrigerate everything and insulin with be the priority.  But COVID showed us that we can be hit with interesting times and still have electricity.  So knowing how to make refrigerator pickles might be a good idea.  Especially with all the shortages affecting so many different products.  Pickles haven't been hit yet, but you never know what will be next on the list of difficult-to-find items.

After using four cucumbers to make a pasta salad, and Ellie protesting that she needed at least four to snack on through the week, I was allowed the remaining cucumbers to experiment with making refrigerator pickles.

Here's the recipe I used:

Refrigerator Pickles

For each quart jar of pickles:

1 1/2 cups water, boiled and cooled

1 cup vinegar

2 tablespoons dill seeds

1 tablespoon kosher salt (or 2 1/2 teaspoons canning salt)

1 teaspoon mustard seeds

1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes, optional

1/4 teaspoon celery seed

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 bay leaf

3-6 cucumbers, depending on size, whole or sliced as desired

Place the salt and spices in the jar.  Add the cucumbers to within 1/2 inch of the top of the jar.  Add the water and vinegar to the cucumbers and cover with a lid and band.  Shake for a few seconds to distribute the spices.  Refrigerate for one week, shaking the jar for a few seconds each day.  These will last up to six months in the refrigerator.

Notes.  Based on other reviews, I omitted the red pepper flakes because I knew my husband wouldn't like them.  If I were making the pickles for me, I'd probably only use half the amount called for.

So what does my dear husband have to say about these pickles?  Unfortunately, he doesn't like them as well as Vlasic, but that was no surprise.  And they were a little salty to him (super surprising, given that he really likes salt), so I cut back on the salt a little in the next batch.  However, they are quite acceptable and he'll happily eat them when Vlasic isn't an option.  Even when TEOTWAWKI is in full swing, he'll still be able to have pickles on his hamburgers and sandwiches.  Life is good.