When it comes to pickles my friends fall into two distinct camps – those who love them and those who detest them. I fall in the middle. I don’t mind them and enjoy eating them but I never crave them. I wish I liked pickles more because when it comes to preserving, making pickles is far easier than making jam.

I’ve tried pickling a few times – spicy pickled okra and dilly beans. For this month’s challenge I tried my hand at bread & butter pickles using Marisa McClellan’s recipe from her first book. They are easy to make and don’t require any ingredients that I didn’t already have on hand other than the fresh vegetables.

The most time consuming step was letting the vegetables “cure” in the pickling salt but all that required was letting them sit in the fridge for several hours while I went out and enjoyed the lovely summer day.

After making a quick brine and cooking the vegetables for 5 minutes, the pickles were ready to be put up in prepared jars. In the end I had four pints of beautiful bread & butter pickles (and an apartment that smelled of vinegar).

If you don’t have the cookbook you can find another version for Small Batch Bread & Butter Pickles on the Food in Jars blog. Happy pickling!