An Experiment

Next-morning update: The pickles are very tasty, just still a bit too cucumber-y for my taste. I took out about half the horseradish, because they definitely have enough of that flavor, so I don't think it needs to be in the jar any more. Next time, I might leave the horseradish in bigger slices (so there's not as much surface area exposed to the brine) and put a bit less in there. So far, so good though!

So this isn't stamping-related, but I had a wild hair to try something new this weekend. When we were in Atlanta several months ago, I had the most amazing homemade bread-and-butter pickles at a restaurant (restaurant-made, I guess?) - they were so good fried, too. So I wanted to try making my own bread-and-butter pickles.

I documented the process:

I started with the slicing and dicing - horseradish is PUNGENT. I could make like 10 jars of pickles with this giant thing.



Slicing up the cucumbers - I had to go to Central Market to find "pickling cucumbers." Found the horseradish there, too.



The pretty jar, with all of the chopped-up cucumbers and horseradish, along with a bunch of fresh dill:



Brewing up my stinky, stinky brine - turns out that "signature" flavor of bread-and-butter pickles is turmeric. Who knew?



I'm glad I actually thought ahead enough to think to put the jar in the sink... usually I spill something bright-colored or stinky everywhere before I think of that.



Pouring - nerve-wracking!



I'll keep you posted on how they turn out - the jar's just cooling now so I can put it in the fridge.