I’ve watched Mom make pickles many times, but today I actually made them myself. I feel so accomplished. However, I don’t remember having to wait around so much with pickles when Mom was making them. I did save a few steps, though. There’s something new called Pickle Crisp that you can use instead of soaking them in lime. If you use Pickling Lime, you have to soak the pickles in it for 2 hours to overnight, then rinse them 3 times to get the lime off. With the Pickle Crisp, I got to skip the rinsing. So, I soaked overnight, then drained them and soaked them for 3 hours in ice water. After that, I had to combine vinegar, sugar, salt, and spices in a pot and boil to dissolve the sugar. Next I added the cucumbers. Then I had to wait again…this time for 6 hours.

Waiting…

Then I boiled the cucumbers in the syrup for 35 minutes, put them into jars, and processed them in the canner. I used wide mouth jars so that they were easier to get into the jars and they’ll be easier to get out to eat. Seven pounds of cucumbers yielded eight pints of sweet pickles. I haven’t tried them yet because they need to cool off. Mom always uses this recipe and the pickles are wonderful, so I hope mine turn out as well. I like to just eat them out of the jar, but I also use them in potato salad, tuna salad, chicken salad, and deviled eggs.

Here’s the final product. Old South Cucumber Lime Pickles

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 13th, 2008 at 8:30 pm and is filed under Cooking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.