Summer is great for sunshine, vacation, friends, and one of our personal favorites-- gardens! Regardless of if you have a green thumb or if you're just dabbling with a few pots on your porch growing herbs, you'll love this foray into pickling as well as an alternative way to use LightTags.
First things, first, let's talk about those pickles! We haven't delved all the way into canning/jarring for storing for years to come quite yet, but we have found a way to make pickles that are fresh, crispy and ready in only 7 days! The best thing is that they last for a couple of months, so you can keep enjoying your garden spoils well into the fall.
Easy Refrigerator Pickles 🥒
(Ready in only 7 days!)
This quick and delicious recipe is perfect for using up all those crisp cucumbers from your garden or farmer's market. Plus, it's a great way to add a refreshing crunch to your summer meals. And it’s a bonus if you grow your own dill and want to throw some in. We scoured the internet and are sharing a revised version of our favorite from Self Proclaimed Foodie.
Kitchen Supplies
- Medium sauce pan
- Mason jars (makes 3-quart size or 5-6 pint jars)
- Cutting board
- Knife
Ingredients
- 10-12 pickling cucumbers
- 4 cups water
- 2 cups white vinegar
- 2 tablespoons kosher salt
- 1 teaspoon sugar
- big bunch of dill thick stems removed
- garlic cloves (1 per jar- smashed or minced)
- dill seed (about 1/2 tsp per pint jar)
- coriander seed (a few shakes per pint jar)
- mustard seed (about 1/4 tsp per pint jar)
Instructions
- Make the brine
Combine water, vinegar, salt, and sugar in a medium saucepan. Bring the mixture to a boil and swirl the pan to ensure the sugar and salt dissolve. Remove the pan from heat and cool to room temperature.
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Wash & slice cucumbers
While the brine is cooling, wash and cut cucumbers. Slice cucumbers into 1/4-inch thick slices, spears, chunks or any shape that inspires you. Set aside. Smash garlic cloves and separate dill from thick stems. Also, sanitize mason jars by running them through the dishwasher. -
Prep remaining ingredients
Smash garlic cloves and separate dill from thick stems. Sanitize mason jars by running through the dish washer, boiling or giving them a good, old-fashioned scrub with anti-bacterial soup and water (lids too!)
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Make the pickles
Layer the prepped cucumbers with the fresh dill, smashed garlic, dill, coriander and mustard seed in the jars. Fill them up to the break-line in the jar. Finish by adding enough brine to cover the cucumbers. -
Tag the pickles
Seal with an airtight lid and put one LightTag on top of one of the jar lids. (You can Tag every lid, but if you're keeping them in one section of the fridge together, you can just use one for simplicity) Set the tag for 7 days (aka push the button on top 7 times) and store in the fridge.
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Enjoy!
The flavor is best when stored for at least a week-- so watch that LightTag closely. When it turns red, it's ready to eat! Pickles should be good for at least 4-6 weeks after that but we've found that they're edible (although not ideal) a lot longer than that.
Using LightTags in Reverse 🔅
LightTags work by tracking time and giving you a visual alert about food freshness. In "normal" use, you set the number of days that you're comfortable eating a food and the teal-yellow-red "stoplight" coloring of the LightTag counts down for you. In normal use, when it's red, it's bad. Using the LightTag "in reverse" means we're changing the way you interpret the colors.
In this alternative use, teal means it's NOT ready, yellow still means one day before it changes and red means it IS ready.
So for all of your fridge-savvys out there, make sure that the rest of the family knows not to throw the pickles away when the light is red!
Bonus Boozy Pickle Recipe
Not into dill pickles? We have some friends like you, so found this super fun (and yes, it's alcoholic, so make sure you keep you label them if you have kids around!) Gin & Tonic Pickle recipe. It's also a quick fridge pickle that's ready in 7 days, so you can use LightTags in reverse to track this one too.
https://www.delish.com/cooking/recipe-ideas/recipes/a54828/gin-and-tonic-pickles-recipe/
Enjoy those garden spoils!