Zesty Bread and Butter Pickles

I’ve really been branching out in my canning over the last few years and these bread and butter pickles are one of my branches. I didn’t grow up in a pickle family – meaning that it wasn’t really something we served or had as a side dish. It wasn’t until I met my husband and every meal with his family had a pickle platter that I started to appreciate them. In fact, pickles are a great way to experiment and try new recipes. Be it classic dills, bread and butter or fermented, there are lots of options when it comes to homemade pickles.

These bread and butter pickles are a delightfully crunchy mix of both tangy and sweet flavours. This makes them the perfect side dish, topping on sandwiches/burgers or perhaps a yummy snack. While I do make a mean dill pickle, I have to admit that I prefer these babies.

This recipe is very versatile, suitable both for canning or refrigerator pickles. I also find your choice in pickling cucumbers is a little more flexible with this recipe than when you are making dills. For dill pickles you want to process them on the same day that the pickles were harvested (ideally) which means you need a lot of cucumbers all at once. But for these pickles I have been able to save up my own cucumbers from the garden over a few days with no impact on quality or taste.

This recipe makes 8 pint (500 ml) jars of pickles. Feel free to make more or less as you desire! For refrigerator pickles you simply skip the canning part and once the pickles have cooled you put them in the fridge, ensuring you consume them within a month.

New canning guidelines were released in 2015 and they state that if you are processing your jars in a water bath for ten or more minutes (or using a pressure canner) that it is not necessary to sterilize your jars. Sterilizing means boilings your jars for 10 minutes. So you may skip this step but it is still strongly recommended that you thoroughly wash and inspect your jars for any cracks. I also add the step of pouring boiling water over my jars before filling so that the drastic temperature change (hot stuff going into cool jars) does not cause them to crack or break.

For more information about the new canning guidelines check out this article.

I hope you enjoy these pickles as much as our family does!

Happy canning,

P.S. Please pin for future reference and to share in the pickle love