Icicle Pickles


Two weeks ago (wow, the days fly by) we embarked on an icicle pickle adventure. I say adventure because S. and I had never made a pickle recipe that required multiple draining and bringing, etc periods. We used the recipe for Sweet Icicle Pickles in the ball blue book. So, basically we had to find containers to house 8 pounds of sliced cucumbers (and associated liquid) over a week-long period)... We used some gallon jars...


First you brine them (water and salt) and let them sit for a week. Then, we rinsed 'em and covered them with boiling water and let them stand overnight again. Next, it was time for the pickling spices...so we boiled those, vinegar, and sugar, then let the whole mess sit for another 24 hours. Now's the fun part...Every day, for the next week we drained off the liquid, re-boiled it, and put it back over the cucumbers.... (ag). So finally, we were ready to can them! One more boil and then into the jars (we actually came up a tiny bit short on brine and had to whip up some sugar-vinegar-pickling spices at the last minute....). And voila.... here's hopin' they taste good! (and yes, they're slices...not typical "icicle" style..but some of our cukes--ok most--were waay too big for spears.)

4 comments:

    I've never heard of icicle pickles, but now I'm intrigued. I have lots of cucumbers thanks to a bit of over-enthusiastic picking at a local farm this past weekend. Did you use pickling cukes or "regular"?

     

    We used mostly 'Straight Eights' as we had loads of them....our pickling cucumbers didn't do very well (not that I'm complaining mind you!!).

     

    Hi Emily! Thanks for popping over to my blog.

    I've not made the Icicle Pickles before. For the life of me, I don't understand the reason behind re-boiling and re-soaking, but that's just me clinging to my old ways of making pickles. lol When you're ready to sample these, let us know what they taste like.

     

    I absolutely will. You know, me neither as far as reasoning for the reboiling (I mean, that's not going to make them crisper,is it?) Maybe it adds to the flavor? I'll have to wait and see...

    Stll, it was definitely interesting trying this way of doing pickles.

     
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