Traditional Bread & Butter Pickles

Or in other words...sweet pickles.  I know a lot of people actually don't like sweet pickles, but Jon LOVES them.  He can eat a whole jar in one sitting.  With our new love for pickling and canning food, we made this great concoction with the help of a recipe from our canning book.  It's super easy, but I must warn you that the vinegar smell is one to burn the nostrils.  Picklers beware!

Ingredients:

• 6 cups sliced, trimmed pickling cucumbers (1/4" slices)
• 2 large onions, thinly sliced
• 1/3 cup preserving and pickling salt (you can just use regular salt, if desired)
• 1 3/4 cups white vinegar
• 1 1/4 cups granulated sugar
• 1 1/4 tablespoon mustard seeds
• 2/3 teaspoon celery seeds
• 2/3 teaspoon ground turmeric
• Pickle granules

Method:

1. Combine cucumbers, onions and salt in a glass or stainless steel bowl.  Mix well, cover with cold water and let stand at room temperature for two hours.  Transfer to a colander placed over a sink, rinse with cool running water and drain thoroughly.
2. Prepare stockpot/canner and jars 
3. Combine vinegar, sugar, mustard seeds, celery seeds and turmeric in a large stainless steel saucepan.  Bring to a boil over medium-high heat, stirring to dissolve sugar.  Stir in vegetables and bring to a boil.  
4. Pack vegetables into hot jars, leaving 1/2 inch headspace.  Add rounded 1/8 teaspoon pickle granules.  Ladle hot pickling liquid over vegetables, leaving 1/2 inch headspace.  Remove air bubbles: re-measure headspace.  If needed, add more cucumbers to meet recommended headspace.  Wipe rim, center lid on jar.  Screw band until fingertip-tight.
5. Process filled jars in boiling water for 10 minutes.  Remove stockpot lid.  Wait 5 minutes., then remove jars, cool and store.
6. Allow to sit for 24 hours before eating 

We didn't have enough cucumbers, so as you can see, we have way too much room in our jar.  However, they still turned out great.  This will only affect your pickles if you plan to store them for a long time.  We ate ours in under one week, so it made no difference.

I hope you enjoy!