Cucumbers are offered cheaply on the market or in discounters at harvest time. The fine vegetable can also be easily cultivated in the garden and even in tubs on the balcony. With a rich harvest, it makes sense to also make pickles yourself.
Dill adds a tasty touch to pickles
Boil pickles
Before you can enjoy the crunchy snack, the little gherkins have to be soaked in vinegar for a long period of time. The brine penetrates the vegetables and preserves them by successfully preventing the penetration of bacteria through the acid present. This process makes the pickled cucumbers durable for a longer period of time.
For three to four medium-sized jars of pickles you will need about 1 kilo of small cucumbers, 1 onion, dill, vinegar, water and a ready-made spice mix with mustard seeds, juniper berries and bay leaf for pickling. If you have the right spices in stock, you can also mix them yourself. The ideal jars for pickles are jars with screw caps.
- Sterilize your jars by placing them in boiling water for a few minutes. Drain the glasses on a clean tea towel.
- Wash the cucumbers thoroughly. It is best to use a vegetable brush to scrub them properly.
- Remove the base of the stem with a sharp knife.
- You can pickle the cucumbers whole or cut them into slices or wedges.
- Divide the dill into several portions and wash under running water.
- Peel the onion and cut into rings.
- In a large saucepan, bring 1 liter of water to a boil along with 500ml of your choice of vinegar (wine vinegar is good) and 2 tablespoons of salt.
- Distribute the cucumbers, the onion, the dill and some of the preserving spices into the jars.
- Pour the boiling vinegar broth over the vegetables. The glasses must be full to the brim, no cucumbers should stick out.
- Immediately screw the lids on the jars and invert them for a few minutes. This creates a vacuum in the glass.
- Allow the jars to cool and then place them in a dark, cool place.
Canning cucumbers this way will keep them until the next harvest if done neatly. If not, the cucumber water will become cloudy after just a few days and you will unfortunately have to throw away the contents of the glass.
After about a week, the gherkins have soaked through so that they can be tasted. If you want to snack on gherkins earlier, you should put in gherkin slices. These only need two to three days to pull through.
Opened pickle jars are best kept in the refrigerator.