PICKLES – I still can’t believe it! I LOVE pickles especially bread and butter pickles. One of the few drawbacks of living in Spain is that you can’t find sweet pickles at the grocery store. Spanish pickles are crazy vinegary (is that even a word?) and I don’t like them at all; I usually buy German dill pickles. I’d been seeing lots of blog posts about making quick pickles however I never found the little pickling cucumbers so I just forgot about it. That is until I was in the El Corte Inglés (Spain’s answer to Macy’s) supermarket and I found little mini cucumbers. Logically I snatched up a few little boxes and set out to make pickles.
Little did I know that finding mini cukes wasn’t going to be the hardest part of the ingredient list. Apparently you can’t get mustard or celery seeds in Spanish grocery stores either. I searched, I asked, and nada. I figured I’ll just substitute a few things, cross my fingers, and see how they turn out.
I followed the recipe here which I found via this page however I had to make some changes cause I couldn’t find plain white vinegar or mustard seeds or celery seeds. These actually turned out pretty great! They’re not exactly the bread and butter pickles I remember from home but they come pretty close and beggars can’t be choosers so I’ll take ‘em. I’ll definitely have to play around a bit with the spice combinations, try spicy dill pickles, and keep on the quest for mustard seeds. Apparently Indian grocery stores carry them so I’ll have to check them out next time.
These are super easy to make and mine were ready to go in less than 24 hours. If you’re a pickle lover you should definitely give these a try. There’s just something so satisfying about making pickles, I don’t know what it is, but I definitely feel like Martha Stewart.
- 5 ½ cups of mini cucumbers (sliced)
- 1 ½ Tbsp. of Maldon salt
- 1 cup of thinly sliced fresh onion (about half an onion)
- 1 cup of white wine vinegar
- ½ cup of cider vinegar
- 1 cup of white sugar
- ½ cup of packed light brown sugar
- ½ tsp. of green anise (whole seeds)
- ¼ tsp. of dill
- 1/8 tsp. of ground turmeric
- 6 black peppercorns
- Slice your cucumbers however make sure not to slice them to thinly cause they’ll be kind of flimsy and crunchless.
- Add the sliced cucumbers and the Maldon salt to a bowl and mix thoroughly. Let them sit for an hour and a half*.
- Thoroughly rinse the cucumbers getting rid of all the salt and strain in a colander.
- Add the cucumbers and the thinly sliced onion back to the bowl.
- Add the rest of the ingredients to a medium saucepan and bring to a simmer over medium heat and stir. Turn off the heat once the sugar is melted.
- Pour the boiled vinegar and sugar mixture over the cucumbers and onions. Let this sit until the mixture can be refrigerated.
- Add the room temperature pickles to a jar and refrigerate. Let them sit for 24 hours**.
- Enjoy!
- * I ended up letting my pickle and salt mixture sit for two and a half hours and they were fine. I made sure to thoroughly wash the pickles in cold water to get rid of the salt.
- ** My pickles were ready in about 18 hours.
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