Bread and Butter Pickles

Similar to the whole I’ll-never-love-another-relish-more-than-this-one thing, I made two kinds of pickles last year and I will now make bread and butter pickles EVERY YEAR. Yes, that deserves caps. Also from the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving (I have no affiliation with them, but if they ever want to send me free stuff I'm totally OK with that), their classic bread and butter pickles rock. my. world.

(As an aside, the dill pickles I did last year were… meh. Too salty for my taste, and not “dilly” enough. Perhaps my spices were too lackluster, or I may have screwed up the recipe, but either way I’m not bothering with that recipe again)

I use a variation on their original recipe bread and butter, where I use cider vinegar instead of white. They offer the “English” variation which uses brown sugar instead of white, and cider vinegar instead of white – but since I'm low on brown sugar I used white. I don’t remember what I did last year, but I have a feeling it was the same thing since I generally don’t have a lot of brown sugar hanging around.

BTW – yellowed cukes are great for relish and pickles. Just peel them and I suggest seeding them as well. Keep in mind that the skins and seeds do not become more tender with the pickling/relishing process. I got mine ½ price at a local organic farm. They were going to rip them up and compost them the very day that I was there. Bonus for me!