Canning Bread and Butter Pickles
We harvested another round of cucumbers from our garden and wanted to bring you along in our process of canning bread and butter pickles. We decided to preserve these as bread and butter pickles since we previously canned dill pickles. We weren’t able to find a recipe in the Blue Ball Canning Book for these pickles and therefore had to review several recipes online and develop our own bread and butter pickle recipe. As you scour the internet, you will find many variations to this recipe. We found many recipes where people made refrigerator pickles and did not can the pickles, however, we wanted to find a canning recipe so that we could add these pickles to our long-term food storage in our pantry. The great thing is that any pickle recipe can be canned.
We processed these cucumbers similarly to the last batch we harvested. We washed them and then sliced them all with a mandolin. One difference for this recipe was that you also added some thinly sliced onions. We added about 10 small onions that we grew in our garden which would be the equivalent of probably 4 or 5 large onions. The other difference is that you pack these cucumbers and onions with salt and ice and let them sit for 3 hours before proceeding with the recipe. One can speculate that you do this to help release some of the liquids from the cucumbers and onions. Otherwise this process was very similar to the dill pickle recipe and was also a water bath canning recipe.
Bread and Butter Pickles:
7 lbs sliced pickling cucumbers (1/4 inch slices)
10 small onions, thinly sliced
½ cup coarse salt
8 cups cracked or chipped ice
5 cups apple cider vinegar
2 cups water
5 cups sugar
1 ½ teaspoons turmeric
1 teaspoon celery seed
2 tablespoons mustard seeds
3 tablespoons pickling spice
4 whole cloves
2 teaspoons cinnamon
Directions:
Combine cucumbers, onions, salt and ice in a large bowl. Mix well.
Put a weight on and allow this mixture to stand for 3 hours. (For a weight, I used a plate with a pyrex pitcher filled with water on top of the plate).
Rinse and drain the cucumber and onion mixture thoroughly.
Combine the vinegar, water, sugar, and spices. Begin to heat this mixture on medium low heat and add the cucumbers and onions to the pot. Bring almost to a boil, but do not allow to boil.
Remove from heat. Use tongs to pack cucumbers and onions evenly into your canning jars. Once you have your canning jars filled with the cucumbers and onions, you will then add the brine to each jar leaving a ½ inch headspace. Process in a boil water canner for 10 minutes for pints and 20 minutes for quarts.
We’d love to hear about your garden and what you are harvesting this season! We’ll be back soon with another recipe or update regarding our garden or our journey to becoming more self-reliant. Thank you for stopping by and visiting Sunup to Sundown!
