You can make dill pickles with much more than cucumbers—try cauliflower or green tomatoes with this dill pickle recipe!

Siddhantsahni28: Wikimedia Commons

Learn how to make dill pickles the “old-fashioned” way. Pickling is a great way to store excess vegetables for the winter, or just to make a tasty snack for the summer! Use this dill pickle recipe to learn how to make homemade pickles.

Pickle Cucumbers and Other Vegetables

This dill pickle recipe is great for pickling cucumbers as well as a variety of other vegetables. That’s right—you can make pickles out of cucumbers, cauliflower, green and red peppers, onions, green tomatoes, summer squash, baby ears of corn—lots of different vegetables can be pickled! The best pickles, of course, are those made from the vegetables in your very own garden (click on the vegetable names to learn how to grow them).

Dill Pickle Recipe

 

• Make a brine of ¾ cup of pickling salt, 2 ½ quarts of water, and ½ cup vinegar, heating to dissolve the salt and cooling before use. Alternate layers of vegetables—small (3-4 inches long) whole cucumbers or large pieces of other vegetables—with layers of fresh dill in a large crock or ceramic bowl. For an extra kick, add hot red peppers and peeled garlic cloves. 
• Pour brine over vegetables, and weigh down using a cloth, plate, and a canning jar full of water.
• For 2 weeks, white scum will appear on the top of your pickles. Remove it daily. 
• When the two weeks is up, pack vegetables in hot, sterile jars. Heat ½ cup pickling salt, 1 quart vinegar, and 4 quarts water to boiling, pour over vegetables, and seal. Process for 15 minutes in boiling water bath. 

It’s easy to make refrigerator dill pickles with a look at this video. Looking for an easier pickle recipe? See our recipe for Kosher-Style Dill Pickles.

Are you a pickle enthusiast? Find more great pickling tips and recipes.

Source: 

The Forgotten Arts, Book Five, 1982