Dill Fridge Pickles and Basil Fridge Pickles

I actually got a chance to do some cooking with my co-blogger last week! The garden had a whole mess of cucumbers - literally more than I could carry - and we thought it would be good to do some pickling. Now, there is a whole art of fermentation and canning and etcetera etcetera, but come on, it's summer. If you're not eating the pickles fast enough that plain refrigerator pickles will serve just fine, you're doing it wrong.

(Briefly: you can ferment cucumbers - or most things, really - in a jar with some salt and water and after a while you will have something sour. You can also can pickles with boiling water and then they can sit on shelves for quite a while. OR you can put some vinegar and salt on some cucumbers and seasonings, stick it in the fridge, and call it a day. Thought so.)

Dill Fridge Pickles (adapted from Smitten Kitchen)

Ingredients:

• 1/2 whole mess of cucumbers (I'd say I used about eight? It'll really vary depending on how big your cucumbers are. Don't sweat it. Just keep filling up jars until you run out of cucumbers)
• Fistful of dill
• 2 cups white vinegar
• 4 tbsp kosher salt (the type of salt actually matters here, since the iodine in table salt can turn pickles dark. I mean, you can still eat them, but they may look odd)

Basil Fridge Pickles (adapted from Food52)

Ingredients:

• 1/2 whole mess of cucumbers
• Fistful of basil, sliced thin
• 2 cups apple cider vinegar
• 1/2 cup mirin or rice vinegar
• 4 tbsp kosher salt
• 1/2 cup sugar

Instructions

Chop up your cucumbers into rounds, nice and thin. Start filling up jars. You don't have to use Mason jars for this, although Mason jars are very useful containers. If, for instance, you've been saving salsa jars, they'll work just fine. Fill them up near the top, but leave about 1/2 inch of space. 

Add the herb (basil or dill) to the jars. You want to have enough of it in there to see, but not so much that you can't see the cucumbers. One head, or two large sprigs, of dill should be enough; two to three large leaves of basil.

Mix up the brine - that's the vinegar, salt, and sugar if using it. Shake until all is thoroughly blended, then start pouring it over the cucumbers. Fill up each jar a bit more than halfway with the brine. There'll be cucumbers sticking out of it. That's okay! The salt will start drawing out the cucumber liquid soon enough, and by tomorrow you'll see that the brine will cover the cucumbers.

Close your jars. Shake them well. Stick them in the fridge. You'll be able to see them turn to pickles - they'll turn from dark green to olive green. Eat them up, yum. They'll keep for about three weeks.