Pickled cucumber

[pixieface]

Has anyone got a recipe for pickled cucumber,?not the tiny gerkin type but the biggies, we have been given several ridge cucumbers and it occured to me I could pickle them to eat during the winter with bread and cheese.

[Luath]

Just answered this one on River Cottage - was that you?

I've doen them a few times like this: wipe them over, place in jar and cover with spiced pickling vineagr or plain vinegar. Sela and labe, leave 3 - 4 weeks before eating. Hope this helps.

[pixieface]

Nope, but thanks anyway, will be doing them tomorrow.

[Luath]

8)

[Moonwaves]

Might as well reply to this post rather than starting a new one on essentially the same subject. Have just posted this over on http://www.thegreenlivingforum.net/forum/ but thought I'd try it here as well just in case there are more people awake here than there

I'm having a slight emergency. I took home 5 kilos of cucumbers from the community garden I volunteer at the other day as, although I can't stand them myself, we had just picked at least as much again and something had to be done with them. I offered to try pickling or otherwise putting them up so that I could then bring them back and everyone could enjoy (hopefully!) them during breaktimes.

I have one load of a weird cucumber conserve on the go (basically a jam kind of thing - weird but it used up 2 kilos so why not?) and then after trawling what books I have and the internet, having navigated the strange discussions about whether or not to peel and whether or not to deseed not to mention which way round is the right way to peel, I decided to do some bread and butter pickles. Only I got mixed up because for a while I thought I'd do dill pickles so I got a bit confused between http://down---to---earth.blogspot.com/2 ... mbers.html and http://www.foodinjars.com/2009/08/11/ga ... l-pickles/ and ended up doing a spice blend with mustard seed, celery seed AND dill seed (as well as the tumeric and cayenne pepper). Anyone care to offer any opinions on whether the dill will go with the others at all? I hate dill nearly as much as I hate cucumbers so me taste testing as I go isn't going to work.

Thanks for any help.

[Millymollymandy]

I think it will be fine so don't worry! I still have a load of 4 year old bread and butter pickles but I went off it years ago so they are just sitting there taking up precious space!

[Moonwaves]

Thanks. I made up another set of spices without dill seeds and used them last night but I still have one more batch to do so might just throw them in. Although I had found another recipe for bread and butter pickles which also uses allspice berries and cloves which I thought would be interesting, too. Despite the smell of cucumber in my kitchen I nearly want to get more now so that I can try all the variations. Have to admit that the ones I did last night smelled good by the time I had finished (didn't smell of cucumber just vinegar, spices and onions - lovely). Only two of the pots sealed properly though. Boo. Will reprocess them when I do the others later as I don't know when they'll be eaten. Guaranteed that since I'll go to the bother of processing them, they'll all be finished with a week or two, I'm sure.