Homemade Quick Pickles

My genius brother had the best idea ever last week.  He’s a frequent recipe tester and I was chatting with him about what to make next and he came up with Pickles!  Genius!  I love pickles and it sounded really fun to try.  Game on.  Of course, I’m not the most patient person on earth, so we went for Quick Pickles. And, yes, I roped him into helping me make the pickles.  Don’t worry, he loved every minute of it.

The options for pickling are actually nearly limitless.  You can pretty much pickle any veggie and you can even pickle watermelon rind.  We decided to start out with some less exotic options and made pickled onions, pickled mushrooms and pickled cucumbers – aka dill pickles.

Homemade Quick Pickles

We started out with nice fresh veggies.

We sliced the the onions and most of the cucumbers.  I did cut one of the cucumbers into spears.  For the mushrooms, we quartered them.

I did have to buy the fun Mason jars, but they were less expensive than I thought.  And who doesn’t want extra Mason jars around the house, right?

I followed a few recipes that I found online for the first few batches, but then I just started winging it.  According to Skillet.lifehacker.com, the ratio for pickling is:  equal parts vinegar and water and four times the sugar to salt.  Once you have the ratio down, you can add flavors you love like garlic, dill or chili peppers.  I did add a few twists from my peppercorn grinder and at least one piece of garlic to every jar as well.  Each one ended up coming out slightly different, which I think is fun.  My favorite is the pickled mushrooms.  They are delicious.  The red onions are going to accompany our burgers tomorrow night. And the pickles are good as pickles, but my genius brother chopped them up and put them in pasta salad.  Brilliant, that one.  I’m going to add them to some tuna tomorrow.

Now that I’ve conquered cucumbers, onions and mushrooms, I think I’m ready to pickle some watermelon rind!  My brother wants to pickle eggs, but I’m not sure I’m on board with that.  What would you pickle?  Let me know in the comments!  Maybe I’ll try it!

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