It's been a coupe of years since I have made pickles. I am not sure why I got out of the habit. Probably Covid or something like that. It seems to be the easy excuse these days. I have a friend that has dropped a hint on more than one occasion that some of my refrigerators pickles would be really good.
I have gotten several accolades on these pickles. My wife has an aunt that keeps the brine and uses it for other things long after the pickles are gone. I think she actually keeps buying her own cucumbers and puts them in the container until all of the juice is eventually gone.
The funny thing is, there isn't really anything special about the recipe. It's one I found online and I have made a few small tweaks to it over the years until I get the desired outcome that everyone seems to love.
I am not going to share the core recipe with you. If you want that, you need only Google "refrigerator dill pickles". There are hundreds if not thousands of them out there. Just pick one!
A basic brine for pickles starts with water, vinegar, and salt. While my recipe calls for white vinegar, I have used both apple cider and white in the past and they both deliver decent results.
After the first or second time I made the pickles, I decided they were entirely too salty. I eventually adjusted the ratio of kosher salt that is used in the recipe. It calls for a full 1/4 cup to six cups of water, but I just eye ball it and make sure I put in less than 1/4 cup. You can see here my salt is a bit below the top of the measuring cup.
Although I am using an instant pot here, no pressure cooking was actually involved in this recipe. I simply used the pot to boil the water quicker. It actually still took quite a while to bring it to a boil and I think I could have done it just as fast on the stove top.
While the water was coming to a boil, I started cutting up my cucumbers.
We got some really small ones at the farmer's market that I thought would be cool to leave whole. After a while, I realized since there is no heat or cooking involved in these pickles, it might be hard for the brine to penetrate the cucumbers whole. You will see in a coming photo that I ended up slicing them lengthwise to expose more of the surface in hopes they will absorb the brine better.
The rest of the cucumbers I decided to cut up into slices for things like sandwiches and burgers. That is mostly what we use pickles on anyway.
I know I said these were refrigerator pickles, but I think I forgot to mention that they are garlic dill pickles. As you can imagine, that required me to cut up some garlic as well.
And finally the dill that we also picked up from the farmer's market that morning. We also grabbed twelve ears of peaches and cream sweet corn. It was a quick trip to the market.
The original recipe called for whole black peppercorns which I still put in the "jars".
I also started adding yellow mustard seed at some point in time. I think it gives the pickles something extra. No one complains about them, so I will probably keep throwing them in there!
The brine had eventually come to a boil and I was waiting for it to cool back down to room temperature. During that time, I took the opportunity to pack the rest of the containers with the pickles and everything else.
Funny fact and I don't know if it is just a midwest thing, but they basically call everything pickles here. Even before the cucumbers are actually pickled they call them pickles. It drives me nuts quite honestly, but I sometimes find myself falling into the colloquialism myself.
Quite honestly, besides the prep work, the hardest part of this recipe is the fact that you have to wait seven days after you make them before you can try them. Of course, the longer you let them go before digging into them the better they will be.
After the pickles have been in the refrigerator for about half a week, I usually tip the containers upside down so that all of the flavors can mix together better. I also usually put all of the herbs and stuff down at the bottom of the jars versus the top, but if you flip them, it doesn't really matter.
I was able to make three containers of pickles with the cucumbers that we bought. I will likely give one container to the friend that keeps asking for them and we will keep the other two for ourselves.
These last several months in the "fridge" if you don't end up eating them all before them. I am pretty excited to see how this batch turns out!
All pictures/screenshots taken by myself or 
