Home » Preserving Food, What's Cooking

Bread & Butter Pickles Recipe

>18 June 2010

bread and butter pickles

All of our mouths were watering as the house filled with the aroma of these delicious pickles this morning!!

Here’s the recipe:

Makes 7 pints

  • 4 quarts cucumbers, sliced (about 15, 6″-8″ cucumbers; leave peels on)
  • 4 medium white onions, peeled and thinly sliced
  • 2 quarts ice
  • 1/2 cup pickling salt (regular table salt leaves a sediment in the jars)
  • 5 cups sugar
  • 1 1/2 tsp turmeric
  • 1 tsp celery seed
  • 2 Tbsp mustard seeds
  • 5 cups apple cider vinegar

In a large pot (I use my pressure canner), mix cucumbers, onions, salt and ice. Cover with a lid and let sit for 3 hours. Next, drain the mixture well and return to pot. Add sugar, spices, and vinegar; heat until it’s almost boiling, stirring mixture- do not let it get to a boil.

In the mean time, have your jars either steaming in the dishwasher, simmering in a pot of hot water, or sitting in a low heated oven. You’ll need the jars hot before you add the extremely hot pickle mixture to them; otherwise the jars could break.

When the mixture is ready, pour into hot jars, leaving about 1″ headspace, and seal lids. Hot water bath for 10 minutes, just to be safe.

*Note: When I made this recipe I used 6 onions, and ended up with 9 pints of mixture. There were way too many onions though, in my opinion, so I adjusted the recipe accordingly.

7 Comments »

  • Stephanie said:

    Thank you Kendra!!! I wanted a recipe for these:) Can’t wait to try them!

  • Jessica said:

    I have NEVER been able to make pickles without them being so soggy that no one will eat them. I have even used pickling salt and alum in the past…do yours turn out nice and crispy?

  • Susan said:

    The new ball book of preserving says to put the jars in the water bath and fill with water to cover (unless they are quarts -then fill to about an inch from top. This will sterlize them while the water is heating.

  • Denise said:

    I have recently discovered that I love B&B pickles, so thanks much for the recipe!!! Plan to make these this year if any of our cuke plants survive. THey aren’t looking so hot right now. :(

    Bet that icy water soak really crisps up the cuke slices!!

  • Kendra at New Life On A Homestead (author) said:

    Jessica,

    These aren’t like snap-in-half crisp, but they aren’t soggy at all. I like ‘em :) Do you use ice?

  • Debbie Chamlee said:

    Kendra,

    I saw your pictures of the cucumbers on Facebook & said that I was also canning bread & butter pickles. Is this the recipe you got from recipezaar? My recipe is pretty much the same. It is my Aunt Bonnie’s recipe. Here is is:

    4 qts. sliced cucumbers
    1 1/2 c. sliced onions
    2 large garlic cloves
    2 qts. ice cubes
    1/3 c. salt
    4 1/2 c. sugar
    1 1/2 tsp. turmeric
    1 1/2 tsp. celery seed
    2 Tbsp. mustard seed
    3 c. vinegar

    Wash cucumbers & drain. Slice unpeeled cucumbers. Add onions & garlic. Add salt & mix thoroughly. Cover with ice. Let stand for 3 hours. Drain & remove garlic cloves. Combine sugar, spices & vinegar. Heat just to boiling. Add drained cucumber & onion slices. Heat 5 min. Pack hot pickles loosely into clean, hot pint jars to 1/2 inch of top. Process in boiling water for 5 min.

  • Kendra at New Life On A Homestead (author) said:

    Debbie- Wow! Your recipe is just about the same as the one I tried. Yeah, I found it on recipezaar… just changed it a little. It looks like yours might be better though. I don’t like so many onions. Thanks for sharing!!

Leave your response!

Add your comment below, or trackback from your own site. You can also subscribe to these comments via RSS.

Be nice. Keep it clean. Stay on topic. No spam.

You can use these tags:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

This is a Gravatar-enabled weblog. To get your own globally-recognized-avatar, please register at Gravatar.