Cheater's spicy pickles

dixie 3/25/2010, 1:11 pm

My home canned pickles are long-gone, but we use a lot of hot pickles & here's what I do:

I buy the cheapest hamburger dills available.
Drain off at least half of the liquid & discard.
Slice several jalapenos (to taste).
Add hot pepper flakes, I use about a tsp to a 46 oz jar of pickles.
Refill jar with sugar, close lid & rotate jar back and forth to dissolve sugar.
Refrigerate

If you use fresh jalapenos they will be ready to eat in a week. If you use pickled jalepenos it will take 3-4 weeks.

I just open the jar occasionally and taste one to see when they are ready.

ander217 3/26/2010, 4:27 pm

Dixie, my DIL loves hot pickles. Do you have a recipe for making them from scratch? I'd like to try to make some for her this summer when our cucumbers are ready.
Thanks.

Jeff Buffington 3/27/2010, 12:15 am

ander217 wrote:Dixie, my DIL loves hot pickles. Do you have a recipe for making them from scratch? I'd like to try to make some for her this summer when our cucumbers are ready.
Thanks.

That sounds really good!

I saw some "hot" dills at the grocery store and decided to pick 'em up. To me, the (supposed) "heat" is after the fact... so I'm guessing it's something added after the fact, but before being packaged.

Neverless, last year I took some of my sweet banana peppers and added a cut (slitted, but still with seeds) habenero alongside the fresh dill and celery seed, to a few jars before adding the boiling sweet-vinegar liquid. So far, those appear to have the initial 'sweet' taste I expect, followed by a tad bit of heat and flavor.

I can't wait until later this year to can some more!

dixie 3/27/2010, 7:34 am

Jeff,
What ratio vinegar/salt/sugar do you use? I've tried many different recipes, but they are never really crisp (except for the ones I use a canning lime soak). The recipe I usually use tastes great, but just isn't really as crisp as I would like.

If you want my lime pickle recipe, which you cook til they turn clear, LMK. They are great to add a tad of green food coloring to for gifts & are super crisp & sweet.

ander217 3/27/2010, 11:32 am

Jeff, your "sweet/hot" pickles sound really good. It sounds as though I could just add a hot pepper to each jar of my kosher dill recipe, and it would make the hot dills.

Dixie, I have trouble with my pickles staying crisp, too. My mom used to make lime pickles. I stirred them for her, and I remember how I hated the feel of it if I got the lime solution on my hands.

My grandmother used to add alum to her pickles to keep them crisp, but it never sounded like something I wanted to eat, so I never used her recipe. I have good luck making refrigerator pickles, pickle relish, dilled green beans, dilled okra, and sweet pickles of all sorts, but the crisp dill cucumber pickle still eludes me. A neighbor told me to put a grape leaf in each jar, but I haven't tried that yet. Anyone know the secret to crisp dill pickles? (I also water bath mine after pickling, which makes it even harder to keep them crisp.)

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