The garden is producing well, despite the loss of the onions and peppers (I think the cukes ate the peppers, but they profess innocence). However…
I planted cucumbers, which have done exceedingly well. I ripped out half to keep them from murdering the string beans (hence my suspicions regarding the peppers). Nonetheless, the remainder are thriving, nay, attempting to take over the backyard. They are not only blossoming, but starting to bear fruit. Which leads me to a problem.
It appears I did not purchase and plant table cucumbers but rather a variety more commonly pickled. I have never made pickles before and, to be honest, I can not justify the money required to buy the proper equipment (boiler, jars, lids, seals, etc.) nor do I really have the time in which to fool around with learning a new culinary skill at the moment.
So… can you eat pickling cucumbers? Yes, they’re small and sort of warty but really I don’t care about that. Can you eat them raw?
If not, there are really only two alternatives: either I trade 'em locally for something I’ll eat, or the compost heap.
I’ve never eaten a pickling cuke raw but I imagine they’d be just fine in salads, etc.
If you’d rather pickle them, make freezer pickles. It’s easy, and the only equipment you need is a saucepan and some freezer bags.
In a bowl:
5 cups cucumbers (sliced as thin or thick as you like, and don’t peel them)
Sliced onions
A few cloves of garlic
Jalapenos (optional)
In a saucepan:
2 cups water
2 cups sugar
1 cup white vinegar
1 teaspoon salt
Boil that for a minute or two – the point is to dissolve the sugar. Pour it over the bowl of cukes, let it cool a bit and then put it into freezer bags.
The pickles are sweet and sour and nice and crisp. I love 'em. You can do it with regular cukes or pickling cukes.
OK… .do you chill them first? Freeze them? Eat them right after you pour the “sauce” over them? How do you store them (fridge?) and how long are they good for?
Something I’ve noticed in the picklers we grow is a tendency toward rubberiness becoming more pronounced over a day or two. Never as crisp as the other types, but still tasty.
Eat them and just be sure to rub off all the little prickers on the outside. There is nothing bad about turning the vine back around when they go to far. They’ll grow fine back in the direction they came from.
Freeze them. Let them cool off a bit before freezing, just because it’s easier on your freezer, not putting warm stuff in there.
I haven’t tried eating them before freezing.
So, they go in the freezer (in freezer bags, with the liquid) and when I’m ready to eat some, they thaw in the fridge, in the bag. Then I put them in a covered bowl (keep the liquid with the pickles – don’t drain the liquid) and store them in the fridge.
I’m eating the ones I made last summer, a year ago. I can’t believe how crisp they are.
I actually prefer pickling cukes to the regular, thick-skinned grocery store cukes. I think they taste more vegetable-y and less watermelon rind-y than the latter kind. The skin is thinner and can be left on at your discretion.
I always use pickling cukes for this:
Tzaziki (or similar enough)
To a cup of whole full-fat yogurt add 2 grated pickling cukes, the juice of half a lemon, half a teaspoon of salt and half a clove of garlic, finely minced. Stir it up well and let it sit in the fridge for a couple of hours to let the flavors develop. Optional additions are chopped fresh dill or mint. This stuff is great on baked pita chips or in pita sandwiches or even eaten with a spoon while standing in front of the fridge.
Yep. I googled “freezer dill pickles” and found a bunch of recipes that omitted the sugar. This one looks good. The recipe calls for sugar but there’s a note below saying to leave it out if you’re making regular dill pickles.
I’m posting a link to a site that has a large number of pickle recipes. I recommend you look at a number of recipes to eliminate ones with errors. You should find recipes for most pickles you would like to make. State agriculture sites often have pages to canning and pickling, including refrigerator varieties.
I planted regular cucumbers and now I’m pickling them. There is very little difference that I can see between “regular” and “pickle” cucumbers except that the pickle ones tend to mature smaller and more wrinkled. At the farmer’s market they had different prices for the two types but the farmer couldn’t tell which was which except to say the picking cucs are smaller.
My cucs are trying to take over the garden as well but my money is on the zucchini
There’s no problem with eating pickling cucumbers. Those were the most common cucumbers we used in our household when we were growing up.
And pickling is pretty straightforward, if you’re interested. I prefer naturally fermented pickles, which have a lactic acid sourness rather than vinegar sourness to them. You just take pickles, cut the ends off and score the skin lengthwise. Layer them in a pickle jar with flowering dill, garlic, whole black peppercorns, and optional cherry or grape leaves. Cover with slightly cooled boiled water that has a salinity of about 1 1/2 tablespoons of salt to a quart of water. Top off with a piece of rye bread, cover jar with dish or cheesecloth, and set it out in the sun for three days or so (depending on how sour you like them). When sufficiently sour, strain the pickling brine through a fine mesh sieve. Move pickles to another jar (or several jars), cover with the strained brine, and refrigerate. They should keep about two weeks.
