Bread And Butter Pickles

Ingredients

18 cucumbers (these are from my garden)
1 cup kosher salt
8 cups cider vinegar
8 cups sugar
6 large yellow onion
4 tablespoons yellow mustard seed
2 tablespoon celery seed
2 tablespoon turmeric
2 tablespoon coarsely cracked black pepper

Directions

Sliced up all the cucumbers and put in 2 large bowls (my biggest was to small)

Dissolve the salt in a large pot with 6 quarts of water.

Once the salt is dissolved, add the cup up pieces and

You can use kosher salt or pickling salt. Don’t use iodized table salt.

Add sliced cucumbers to salt water mixer and cover. Put it in the fridge overnight. 

Next day

Combine the sugar and the cider vinegar in a large pot over medium heat and stir until it’s dissolved.

While you’re waiting for the sugar to dissolve, slice the onion very thin.

Add the mustard and celery seed to the pot.

Add the onion and turmeric and stir.

Drain the cucumber pieces.

Add the cucumber and stir. My pot was a little small so I did it in two pots. I guess I could have done this outside in the small crawfish pot.

Over medium heat until it comes to a boil.

Then turn the heat down, cover the pot and simmer for five minutes.

Cooling and ready to add to the jars

Canning

Add as many jars you can to a pot with water and boil to sterilize them. I could only do 4 at a time.

 Once they are sterilized remove them and let the water drain out. With a large mouth funnel start adding the cucumber mixture.

Leave a half inch from the top of each jar. The jars won’t seal right if you don’t. Just fill to the bottom of the threads and you should be fine. 

1st and 2nd batch

Clean the rim of the jar and put a lid and ring on each jar and tighten barely finger tight. Don’t put them too tight at this time. So some air can leak out of the jar. The heat will cause the air to expand and squeeze out under the lid.Put the jars in a pot with enough water to cover the jars an inch or two. Over high heat bring everything to a boil. Go for about 10 minutes after the water in the pot comes to a boil.

After the 10 minutes of boiling, remove from heat and you can tighten the ring. When it cools, the air will contract and vacuum seal the lid. Once the lid seals store. Let them stand for 2 weeks and enjoy.

My 1st batch