Sweet Pickles

Modified from the National Center for Home Food Preservation

4 lbs 2-5 inch pickling cucumbers

3/4 cup canning or pickling salt (separated)

2 tsp celery seed

2 tbsp mixed pickling spices

5 1/2 cups sugar (separated)

4 cups vinegar

Day 1: Wash cukes, cut 1/16th inch off blossom side and discard. Leave 1/4 inch of stem if there. Place into suitable 1 gallon container (I did a 2.5 batch and used a 2 gallon glass jar I got from Wal-Mart). [Do NOT slice at this point...so made this mistake once!] Add 1/4 cup canning salt to 2 quarts water and boil. Pour over cukes. Add suitable cover and weight (I used pint jars filled with water on a plate, then covered with a towel and then put on the lid (so the lid wasn't sealing it)). I kept mine in the basement as it is more consistent temperature (you want about 70 F, so room temperature).

Day 3: Drain salt water and discard (I dumped mine in a clean sink). Rinse and rescald cover, weight, etc. (you will wash this a lot...) Return cukes to container. Add 1/4 cup salt to 2 quarts fresh water and boil. Pour over cukes. Replace cover and weight and towel.

Day 5: Repeat Day 3.

Day 7: Drain salt water and discard. Rinse and rescald everything. Slice or strip cucumbers, if desired (I would recommend this (I did it, I did spears), as you need uniform cukes if you leave whole) and put in container. Place celery seed and pickling spices in small cheesecloth bag. Combine 2 cups sugar and 4 cups vinegar in a saucepan. Add spice bag, bring to a boil and pour pickling solution over cukes. Add cover and weight and towel.

Day 8-13: Drain syrup and spice bag and save. (What I did was use my pot for steaming...so the steamer basket catches the cukes, everything else goes down into the pot so this separates them and saves the solution). Add 1/2 cup sugar each day to the syrup and bring to a boil. Remove cukes and rinse. Scald container, cover, weight daily. Return cukes to container, add boiled syrup, cover, weight and towel.

Day 14: Drain syrup and save. Fill sterile pint jars with cukes, leaving 1/2 inch headspace. Add 1/2 sugar to syrup and bring to a boil. Remove spice bag and toss. Pour hot syrup over the cukes, leaving 1/2 inch headspace. Adjust lids and process. For pints, if you are at 0-1000 ft, 5 minutes, 1001-6000 ft, do 10 minutes and above 6000 ft, do 15 minutes.

Yield: 5-9 pints.