The GirlAlive Blog

Birthday Pickles

November 10, 2009 on 1:16 pm | In Recipes and Food | 2 Comments

Thursday is my husband’s birthday, so I’ve spent part of this week making pickles. That seems weird, but I’ve kind of gotten used to it. There’s a story behind the pickles.

My husband and I got married in April of 2005. It was a tiny courthouse wedding, so we had another big church wedding in October of 2005. After the wedding, we had a ton of leftover food, like with most big catered events. We especially had a lot of veggies and dip leftover. Carrots and celery could be used in soups and whatever. But what were we going to do with a huge tupperware container of sliced cucumbers? They’d go squishy within days and they can’t be frozen or anything. I had recently seen an episode of Good Eats where Alton Brown make pickles. It seemed like a reasonable idea.

I made the cucumber slices into bread and butter pickles. My husband had never had bread and butter pickles before. They don’t do the wide variety of pickled cucumbers in the UK that you can get in the US (Polish and German influences in the US and stuff). He apparently fell in love with the pickles. Since then, every year on his birthday I ask if he wants anything specific for his birthday dinner. Every year without fail, he wants pickles. Every anniversary, he wants pickles. He’s even asked for them for Christmas and Thanksgiving.

It takes about 3 days to make them properly, so I don’t make them as often as he asks for them. But we have no money and I couldn’t really afford a present for him this year, so I made pickles. They’re cooling in the kitchen right now, and should be fully pickley by Thursday.

The Recipe for Bread and Butter Pickles (can also be found on page 125 of the Girlalive Cookbook).

1 ¼ (566 g) pounds cucumbers, cut into slices (Usually about 2 large cucumbers, with the ends cut off and fed to the guinea pigs)
1 onion, sliced very thin
2 Tbsp (30 ml) kosher salt (or half that amount of table salt)
2 cups ice cubes
1 cup (240 ml) cider vinegar
1 cup (240 ml) sugar
¼ tsp (1.25 ml) turmeric
1 Tbsp (15 ml) mustard seeds
½ tsp (2.5 ml) celery seeds
¼ tsp (1.25 ml) cayenne, or to taste

In a large bowl combine the cucumbers and onion, sprinkle with salt, and toss well. Add the ice cubes and chill, covered, overnight.

Drain the mixture in a colander and rinse under cold water. In a saucepan bring the remaining ingredients to a boil, stirring. Add the cucumbers and onions and bring to just a simmer, stirring. Transfer to a bowl and cool. Chill the pickles, covered, for 24 hours.

I’m not going to go into how to put them in jars for long term storage and all that because I’ve never done it and I don’t want you blaming me if you try and get botulism. So just keep them in the fridge and eat them right away. In the fridge they’ll probably last a week or so. Unless my husband finds out they’re in there.

I’ve done it with thick or thin slices, and most of the time I forget the ice cubes, and it turns out just fine. It seems to be a pretty forgiving recipe. The only problem I had initially was that celery seeds are very hard to find in the UK. Husband found them at an herbal medicine supply place.