How to Make Pickles

Whether you are a successful gardener, an overly ambitious farmers market shopper, or simply someone who loves a little tangy zing on their tacos, burgers, barbecue, grain bowls, sandwiches, and salads, you need pickles in your pantry and refrigerator. Once pickled, seemingly humble cucumbers and banana peppers go from slightly bland to tangy and zingy. Yes, you can get most produce year-round, but pickling is a great way to enjoy the flavors of spring and summer anytime, even if you haven't seen fresh corn in months. Green beans, beets, green tomatoes, and onions are also common contenders but almost all vegetables, many fruits, and even eggs and meat are all ripe for this treatment if you’re looking to preserve food.

The good news is that pickles are simple to make at home — it's easier than you think to add a tart pop of flavor to your cooking. If there’s one method that makes vegetables even better than they are already, it’s pickling. 

During the summer months, “you can pickle everything,” notes April McGreger, a Master Food Preserver, chef, and preservation evangelist living in Philadelphia. “Eggplant, peppers, cauliflower, turnips, carrots, watermelon rind, peaches, okra, green tomatoes, and cabbage every which way.” When the produce is overflowing from our gardens, farmers markets, and grocery stores, it’s time to pickle. Here’s how to do it. 

How to make quick pickles

Quick pickles are also known as refrigerator pickles, because they don’t require fermentation crocks or canning. “I love a good refrigerator pickle because you can be flexible with the brine,” says McGreger. “Since you’re not canning them, you don’t have to worry about the pH. These are the pickles I really like to pull back on the acid so it's almost like vegetables in a vinaigrette.”

To make her quick pickles, McGreger packs a quart-sized mason jar with the fruit or vegetable of choice. She then uses a 3:1 water-to-vinegar ratio with sugar, salt, and optional seasonings like coriander seeds, cumin seeds, and black peppercorns. Any type of vinegar will work, she says, but her favorites are rice, white balsamic, or white wine vinegar, because they impart a little flavor (but not too much). You can swap in flavored vinegars for these white vinegars if you prefer the flavor, but she cautions to take care that the acidity doesn’t change.

Onions are a great place to start. Make these Pickled Onions, stash them in the refrigerator, and then use them on this Citrus and Avocado Salad with Pickled Onions, Shrimp Fried Rice with Coconut and Pickled Onions, Frito Pie, this Roasted Hot Honey Sweet Potato Salad, or any other salads, grain bowls, sandwiches, tacos, burritos, or another savory dish that could use a bit of zing. Once you've pickled onions, be sure to make Pickled Shallots and Quick Pickled Pearl Onions for dishes and cocktails. Pickled onions will last a week or more in the refrigerator.

The same process works for other refrigerator pickles, like Bobby Flay's Dill Pickles, these Danmuji (Pickled Daikon), Snack Peppers, Pickled Beets and Eggs, Zucchini Pickles, Pickled Peaches, and Lemon Okra Pickles. They call for a few hours, days, or weeks in the refrigerator for the best flavor, but require no extra hands-on time.

How to can pickles

While she’s written the book Jam On! Everything You Need To Know about Canning & Preserving: 138 Delicious Recipes!, McGreger says she always references the National Center for Home Food Preservation when looking for information about canning.

There are two types of canning: hot water bath canning and pressure canning. The difference between the two is that hot water bath canning is only for high-acid foods like tomatoes, and foods packed in a high-acid brine. Pressure canning allows for low-acid vegetables, like carrots and okra, and non-pickled foods, such as meat, to be canned safely. With that said, some vegetables and foods like fall squash are not safe for home canning, even with a pressure canner. McGreger says, “if there are no guidelines from the National Center for Home Food Preservation, then there have been no safe guidelines determined.” 

Canned foods are shelf-stable; store them in a cool, dark place until you are ready to use them.

What's the difference between vinegar pickles and fermented pickles?

Most people immediately think of vinegar cucumber pickles when you say the word ‘pickle.’ “I find that people are very confused by the word ‘pickle’ because it’s both a noun and verb and we also use it to refer to at least two different preserving techniques,” says Emily Paster, the author of The Joys of Jewish Preserving. “If you’re at a deli and someone asks if you want a pickle with your sandwich, you know they mean a pickled cucumber. So we say ‘pickle’ without any additional modifier to mean a pickled cucumber. Then there are vinegar pickles and fermented pickles, which is another source of confusion,” she continues. Vinegar pickles are those that use a vinegar brine, while fermented pickles are in a salt water brine and acquire the tang through fermentation, not the acidity of vinegar.

“A classic kosher dill pickle is fermented, meaning that cucumbers are placed in a salt-water brine with seasonings and left to ferment over a period of weeks until the good bacteria do their magic and convert the sugars in the cucumbers to lactic acid and create that distinctive tangy fermented flavor,” Paster explains. “This type of pickle carries certain health benefits, like other fermented foods. And they need to be refrigerated once the fermentation process is complete. But we also use the term pickling to refer to the process of making a vinegar-based brine on the stove, adding it to vegetables (or fruits) in jars and canning those pickles for shelf-stability using water bath canning.”

She adds that both of these methods produce pickles that can be refrigerated, but vinegar pickles are usually canned. Canning fermented pickles to make them shelf-stable is possible, Paster says, but she cautions that “you will lose all the health benefits that fermented foods offer, so I would not recommend it.”

What’s the difference between a sour pickle and a half-sour pickle?

“The difference between a sour pickle and half-sour is simply how long the cucumbers have been permitted to ferment,” says Paster. “A half-sour is fermented for a shorter time so that the pickle is crunchier, greener, and has a milder flavor. A sour pickle is one that is left to ferment all the way, so it is softer, more olive green, and has a strong puckery, fermented tang to it.” Depending on how the pickle will be eaten, whether on its own or in a sandwich or a burger, often determines how sour you want to go.

What’s the difference between a kosher and a dill pickle?

“A kosher dill pickle is one that is flavored with garlic in addition to dill. It actually has nothing to do with the kosher laws or kosher salt,” says Paster. “In an earlier era, around the turn of the last century, garlic was the flavor most associated with Jewish food in many Americans’ minds. So a kosher dill pickle is simply one that induces garlic in the brine and is therefore considered Jewish. The typical flavorings for Ashkenazi pickled cucumbers are dill — which was one of the few herbs that grew in Poland and Russia — garlic, and brown mustard seed.”

Pickles are easy to customize

Once you've made pickles a few times, you'll see how easy they are, and how you can customize the flavors with just a few ingredient swaps. Feel free to play around with the spices used in the brine for your pickles. You can swap in equal amounts of nigella seeds, cumin seeds, coriander seeds, or different types of peppercorns in your brine. And you can vary the vinegar used for the brine as well. Pick any kind of vinegar to make these pickled onions — red wine vinegar, apple cider vinegar, white wine vinegar, or rice vinegar. Making pickles is a good way to use up half-empty bottles of vinegar you have in your kitchen; just mix and match vinegars to make your brine, using half rice vinegar and half apple cider vinegar, for example. You can also use up any spices that are getting old. Simply add them to your pickling brine to experiment with different flavor combinations.

When you've eaten the pickles, the pickling brine can be reheated and reused one more time to make a new batch of onions. Or, you can put it to use in other recipes, mixing it into marinades, salad dressings, sauces, or soups to add a hit of bright acidity.