Easy Homemade Bread and Butter Pickles Recipe

Here in suburban New York we’re enjoying an extended Indian summer. While unseasonable seasons make me nervous—I won’t digress here about global warming—balmy days do offer some benefits. Like an extended harvest—and a bumper crop of Kirby cucumbers at my local farm stand.

I love Kirbys. They’re such a flavorful and homey contrast to the waxed and seedy cucs sold in supermarkets. One of my favorite—and easiest-to-make—salads is thinly sliced Kirbys splashed with soy sauce, sesame oil and rice vinegar. If you’re really ambitious, you can add chopped scallions.

I’m also crazy for bread and butter pickles. I find the sweet-salty-crunchy combination of pickled Kirby cucumbers and onions addictive. I can easily polish off a whole jar of bread and butter pickles in one sitting—to the annoyance of family members who find a lonely slice of onion floating in the pickle jar.

So when I saw the bushel of October Kirby cucumbers at my farm stand, I said It’s time to do this thing. Meaning make bread and butter pickles from scratch. How hard can it be? With canning now the litmus test for hip, locavore, scratch cooks, I felt sure I’d find scads of easy recipes online.

Canning: No can do

But not really. A half hour of Googling yielded loads of—frankly?—scary canning information. You know how, as an experienced home cook, you feel you can wing it through just about anything? Not canning, it seems. Nasty words like “botulism,” “danger” and “hot water bath” appear with alarming frequency in canning instructions.

Finally, however, I hit pay dirt. And from whom else but Smitten Kitchen who posted a no-canning-needed bread-and-butter pickle recipe? I also like My Kitchen Addition’s variation.

So my pickle recipe is a mashup of the two. But because it passed through the Copywriters’ Kitchen’s test kitchen, you know two things: It’s yummy. And it’s easy to make.

Easy Homemade Bread and Butter Pickles recipe

8 cups sliced Kirby cucumbers
3 large Spanish or sweet onions, sliced
2 cloves garlic, halved
¼ cup kosher salt
2 cups sugar
1½ cups cider vinegar
2 tablespoons whole coriander seeds
2 tablespoons whole mustard seeds
½ teaspoon celery seeds
½ teaspoon turmeric
¼ teaspoon ground cloves
Ice cubes

1. Scrub cucumbers under cold water. Pat dry and cut into ¼” slices.
2. Slice onions into thin rings.
3. In a large bowl, toss cucumber, onion slices and garlic with salt. Cover vegetables with a layer of ice cubes. Let cucumbers and onions rest until ice melts. Note: When I made these in October, the ice melted in about an hour. It will melt much faster if you’re making pickles in the summertime.
4. When ice cubes have almost completely melted, prepare brine: combine remaining ingredients in a large heavy pot and bring mixture to a boil.
5. Drain the cucumbers and onions and transfer them to the hot brine. Let veggies and brine come to a boil again. Lower flame and simmer for two minutes. Turn off flame.
6. Let pickles and brine sit until brine cools to room temperature. Spoon pickles into air-tight containers. I used jars—for the “fake it until you make it” look of canned pickles. Don’t tell the Williamsburg cannistas. Store pickles in fridge. They keep 2-3 weeks.

Makes 3 quarts.