• About
    • About Us
    • Contact
    • Disclosure
  • The Kitchen
    • Recipe Box
    • Food Preservation
  • The Great Outdoors
    • The Garden
    • Foraging & Gathering
  • Barnyard
    • Ducks & Ducklings
    • Chickens and Baby Chicks
    • Honeybees, Honey & Beeswax
  • Home & Health
    • Homesteading
    • Health on the Homestead
    • Frugality
  • Local Resources
    • Rare and Uncommon Edibles for the Home Garden

Whole-Fed Homestead

Living Close to the Land & Thriving on Real Food

You are here: Home / Preserving the Harvest / {Easy} Bread and Butter Refrigerator Pickles Recipe

{Easy} Bread and Butter Refrigerator Pickles Recipe

August 29, 2017 by crystal@wholefedhomestead 4 Comments

{Easy} Bread and Butter Refrigerator Pickles Recipe

For years I’ve tried making pickles- everything from bread and butter refrigerator pickles to classic dills… and for years I’ve never found a recipe I have fallen in love with, until now. I didn’t realize how much my general lack of pickling skills was weighing on me- I mean, a homesteader should be able to make a great pickle, shouldn’t they?! Well, I feel like I finally earned my pickle badge!

These are “refrigerator pickles,” which means two main things: 1. they are ridiculously easy, and 2. this recipe is not suitable for canning. You’ll slice up your cucumbers, combine them with a couple other friends, pour a simple warm brine over them, then stash them in the fridge for up to a few months… couldn’t be simpler!

If you have more cucumbers than you can eat, but not quite enough to warrant canning them, this is the perfect solution. Or if you don’t have the time to dedicate to canning. This is the story of my life right now. The fridge is slowly being taken over by half-gallon jars of pickles!

Bread and Butter Refrigerator Pickles
What’s a bread and butter pickle? Basically a pickle that is both sweet and sour. And rumor (well, Wikipedia) has it that they were invented by a couple of cucumber farmers in the 1920s who survived the ups and downs of cucumber farming by bartering their pickles to the local grocer for staples like bread and butter. I love this story!

These are the BEST bread and butter pickles I’ve ever had, because they are the perfect balance of everything: sweet, salt, acid, and flavor. I find a lot of pickle recipes to be either too acidic or too salty- well not these!

A Few Tips…
Since these aren’t cooked, you’ll want to cut the cucumbers into slices so the brine can penetrate the whole thing easily. Using whole cucumbers or even spears won’t result in the best product. Plus, slices are traditional for bread and butter pickles.

While you can eat these at any point after making them, they are best after sitting for a week or two. They should store for several months in the fridge.

{Easy} Bread and Butter Refrigerator Pickles Recipe

Use a mandolin for slicing the cucumbers into nice, even slices. You can cut them into whatever thickness you’d like- super thin to chunkier, whatever your prefer. I like them somewhere in the middle.

Pickle your cucumbers as soon as possible after picking for the crispest, best pickles. Store the cukes in an air-tight container in the fridge if you can’t get to making them right away. I don’t like to use cucumbers that are more than about three days old for making pickles, if I can help it. Ideally I pickle them the day I pick them.

Only use good quality cucumbers- if they are wrinkled, really soft, bruised, or blemished they will NOT get better with pickling. You can use a little bit larger cukes for this, but don’t use the really big ones… you know, the ones that got away.

Bread and Butter Refrigerator Pickles Recipe

Makes 1 Half Gallon or 2 Quarts

Enough cucumbers to fill 1 half gallon jar or 2 quart jars… a few pounds
1/4 of an onion, sliced thinly
1-2 jalapeños, sliced (optional, if you like them spicy)
2 cups water
3/4 cup white distilled vinegar
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
1 cup organic cane sugar
1 1/2 tsp pickling salt
1 Tbs pickling spice

Important first step: remove 1/8-inch of the blossom end of each cucumber. This is the end opposite of the stem that attached the cucumber to the plant. This part contains enzymes that can make your pickles soft. And no one likes a soft pickle.

Cut cucumbers into even-sized slices (I love a mandolin for this!) and pack into jars, with a layer or two of thinly sliced onions (and optional jalapeño slices) somewhere in there too. Fill ‘er up to the top!

In a saucepan, combine the water, vinegars, sugar, salt, and pickling spice- bring to just a boil, stirring occasionally to make sure all the salt and sugar dissolves. Pour the hot brine into the jar over the cucumbers and voila = pickles!

Really, that’s it… let them cool on the counter for an hour and then put a lid on and transfer to the fridge. Make sure that the liquid is completely covering the cucumbers. If after an hour its not, mix together 2 parts water to 1 part vinegar- just enough to top them off (no need to heat this).

Vinegar will make your metal jar lids and bands rust, which is why I like these plastic screw covers for things like this.

It is best to wait a week before digging into your bread and butter refrigerator pickles, and they will last a couple months in the fridge.

Happy Pickling!

Want more from the homestead?

       

This post may contain affiliate links, which means that if you click through them and end up purchasing an item (any item, not necessarily the one I recommended even!)  I may receive monetary or other compensation. The price you pay is unaffected by using this link, and buying stuff you were going to get anyways through an affiliate link is a great way to support your favorite blogger and fellow homesteader! Thanks!

Instagram Collage Whole Fed Homestead

{Easy} Bread and Butter Refrigerator Pickles Recipe

Filed Under: Homestead, Preserving the Harvest Tagged With: garden, homesteading, preserving, recipe, side dish, using preserved goods

Comments

  1. Marianne says

    July 9, 2019 at 8:01 AM

    Can’t wait to try this I’m overrun with cucumbers! I’m diabetic can I replace the sugar with stevia?

    Reply
    • crystal@wholefedhomestead says

      July 16, 2019 at 3:18 PM

      I haven’t tried it so I’m not sure- worth a try though!

      Reply
  2. Bette Patterson says

    July 31, 2019 at 9:12 AM

    Thank you for sharing this recipe! These are the best bread and butter pickles ever! Easy too!

    Reply
    • crystal@wholefedhomestead says

      July 31, 2019 at 3:46 PM

      So glad you liked them! -Crystal

      Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Follow the Adventure!

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
Wholefed Homestead Glad Youre Here Sidebar Header 2 karl and crystal 6 Welcome to Our Homestead!
Wholefed Homestead Newsletter Sidebar Header

Wholefed Homestead What Were Reading Sidebar Header
Ad
Wholefed Homestead Pin with Us Sidebar Wholefed Homestead Pinterest Sidebar
Wholefed Homestead Sidebar Instagram Header
🥔🎉 I haven’t finalized this year’s potat 🥔🎉 I haven’t finalized this year’s potato list quite yet. If you have an absolute favorite variety, I’d love to hear it! Here’s what I have so far:
.
German Butterball: this is our favorite potato! A must-grow for sure. It’s an all-purpose variety, and it’s a gorgeous grass-fed butter yellow inside.
.
Papa Cacho: the most amazing red fingerlings, digging these looks like pulling red bananas out of the dirt because they’re nearly a foot long! They are so fun!! Delicious too and gorgeous rosy inside (pictured above).
.
Upstate Abundance: this is a new variety for me from Row 7, who specialize in good-tasting varieties. It’s also supposed to be high-yielding and fairly disease-resistant.
.
Norkotah & Burbank Russets: we’ve been growing both of these for years. I was hoping a winner would emerge and I’d just grow one of these types, but so far that hasn’t happened so I keep planting them both! They are good but I’d love a russet type that blows me away.
.
What say you- what are your must-grow potatoes?!
.
#potatoesarelife #homemade #homegrown #fromscratch #spuds #homesteaders #homesteading #homesteadlife #organicgarden
Thanks for all your enthusiasm yesterday for the k Thanks for all your enthusiasm yesterday for the kick-off of the grow along, and thanks for following along!
.
We put together this little video, and I’m really lucky to call these fun, creative, and kind gardeners my friends!
.
In Order of Appearance:
@barbebeaty -5b
@honeyblumfarms -7a
@bailey_vantassel -10b
@azurefarm -7b
@dawncosgrove -3
@smarterbynature -8b
@dolledupandmuddy -6b
@hostilevalleyliving -5a
@wildoakfarms -6b
@ajwildwayfarm -5b
@mountainwoodsfarm -5b
@shesrootedhome -8b
@soulgardener74 -9b
@wholefedhomestead -4
@fowlcreekfarm -6a
@tanglewoodhollow -5b
@mybackyardtxgarden -8b
@axeandroothomestead -7
.
#homegrown #fromscratch #homesteaders #homesteading #homesteadlife #organicgarden #zone4 #gardening
🧅🎉 I “winter-sowed” some more onion seed 🧅🎉 I “winter-sowed” some more onion seeds today (and showed the whole *very easy* process in my stories!). This is a fantastic technique if you don’t have a grow light set up or don’t want to babysit any seedlings! Mother Nature does most of the work.
.
On that note, today is the start of The Great Grow Along!! A whole bunch of us gardeners are getting together to share real-time updates from our gardens every week on Wednesdays —> find us all here @thegreatgrowalong and thanks to our sponsors, @tractorsupply and @gurneysseed.
.
#gardening #organicgarden #homegrown #wintersowing #homesteaders #homesteading #homesteadlife #wintergardening
Load More...
This error message is only visible to WordPress admins

Error: The account for needs to be reconnected.
Due to recent Instagram platform changes this Instagram account needs to be reconnected in order to continue updating. Reconnect on plugin Settings page

Wholefed Homestead Behind the Homestead Sidebar Header Karl Crystal 1
Wholefed Homestead Preserving Sidebar
Wholefed Homestead in the Garden Sidebar 2
Wholefed Homestead Keeping Chickens Sidebar
Wholefed Homestead Honey Bees 2Sidebar
Wholefed Homestead Recipe box sidebar

Tags

barnyard beverage breakfast canning chickens chick starter feed Christmas craft or project dinner ducks eggs farmhouse kitchen foraging freezing fresh herbs frugality garden growing mushrooms handmade gift health history holidays homestead Homestead Blog Hop homesteading honeybees informative kale made with honey main dish maple syruping monthly update orchard preserving ramblings raw honey recipe review side dish skincare snack starting seeds treat turkeys using preserved goods

Featured

Preserving Tools & Supplies to Stock Up On Now

Strawberry “SUN” Jam – The BEST Jam Ever! No Pectin, No Canning, Lower Sugar

Veggie-Loaded Homemade Marinara Sauce (Large Batch for Freezing)

Copyright © 2021 · Lifestyle Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in