Crazy But Able

Growing up, I used to love refrigerator pickles. I don’t remember who in my family made the ones I liked so much though. A few years ago I googled for a recipe, and found that the “standard” refrigerator pickles recipe calls for 1 cup of vinegar to 2 cups sugar. That’s way too sweet. After a good amount of experimentation, I came up with this:

• 1 cup cider vinegar
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 tsp Good Seasons Italian dressing mix
• 2 large cucumbers
• 1 small onion

Thinly slice cucumbers; coarsely chop onions; mix them together and put in a medium sized bowl. Heat vinegar and sugar over the stove until all sugar has dissolved. Add Italian dressing mix. When mixture just starts to boil, take it off the stove and pour it over the cucumbers and onions. Put in refrigerator overnight; serve chilled.

You can probably substitute 1 tsp of celery seed and 1 tsp of mustard seed for the Good Seasons dressing mix. The 1:1 ratio of vinegar to sugar still gives pickles a slightly sweet taste, but with more bite. Peggy thinks they’re perfect as is, but I sprinkle a little more vinegar on mine when I grab a bowlful. (I like sour things. I mean, a lot. When I was a little kid I used to sneak swigs of vinegar, and for a while in 4th grade I was drinking straight lemon juice whenever I could get my hands on it until it started ruining my teeth.)

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 15th, 2005 at 8:38 am and is filed under recipes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.