My Dill Pickles

in , , , on Thursday, September 8, 2011




Who doesn’t love a good crispy crunchy dill pickle?  Remember when I posted about Chef Mike Baruch’s kosher dills on August 27th?  I made them and now they are ready to enjoy!

I love making homemade pickles and it brings back great memories from when Mom and Grandma would make them.  The ‘making’ was easy; it was the ‘waiting’ for them to cure that was hard. 

These dill pickles are simple and among the things you need are fresh pickling cucumbers, spices, vinegar, salt and aromatic fresh dill.  I love the fragrance of fresh dill ~ I tie a bundle of dill with string and hang it upside down in the kitchen.  Ahhh, the aroma as you enter the kitchen!  Then when dried, I crush the stems and save the seeds for later use.

When the pickles are all gone, keep the juice!  Add a little to tuna salad; it gives it just the right amount of tang.  The juice is great as a braising liquid for beef, in sauces and dips, mushrooms, pasta and potato salads.  Even place peeled hard boiled eggs in the brine for a couple of days or how about a little pickle juice in your Bloody Mary’s?  

These pickles are great!  They’re delicious, so very crispy to enjoy with most any meal and are a perfect low-calorie snack with some crunch!  





Here’s Chef Mike’s recipe:

Kosher Dills in Vinegar Brine

4 cups water
2 T Kosher Salt
2 T White Vinegar
1/2 bunch fresh dill, stems removed
3 cloves garlic, sliced
1 tsp. mixed pickling spice
Pinch Black Peppercorns
Pinch Dill Seeds
1 Dried Red Pepper Pod

5 Pickling Cucumbers
5 to 6 Green Tomatoes


Rinse the cucumbers and tomatoes under cold water and dry.
Cut into half inch pieces.
Coursely chop the dill and place in the bottom of a 2 Quart canning jar.
Pack in the pickles and tomatoes and slide in the side, the pepper pod.
Now in a saucepan heat the remaining ingredients to a simmer then turn off and cool.
When cool use a ladle and top the pickles with the brine to 1/2 inch from the top of the jar. (Try to scoop up as much of the spice as you can)
Immediately seal with a lid and leave on the counter for 1 hour.
Refrigerate after an hour and you should enjoy them within 3 to 7 days.



Thanks again, Chef Mike!  They’re great!


Be sure to visit my friend, Linda’s blog, at My Kind of Cooking for her great cookbook giveaway.


This entry was posted on Thursday, September 8, 2011 at 6:02 AM and is filed under , , , . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response.

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