These home-canned pickle slices are delicious on hamburgers and sandwiches.
They are sweet and sour with a peppery kick, and have a nice crunch to them.
Just pennies a jar when made in season.
This is a lab-tested recipe from Canadian Living.
Pickle slice on a hamburger. [Profivideos / pixabay.com / 2015 / CC0 1.0]
The recipe
Jar size choices: Half-litre (1 US pint / 500 ml/ 16 oz)
Processing method: Either water-bath or steam canning
Yield: 5 x half-litre (US pint) jars
Headspace: 2 cm (½ inch)
Processing time: 10 minutes (Note: 3 hour standing time in middle of process)
Pickle slices
Ingredients
- 1.5 kg pickling cucumbers (3 lbs)
- 150 g onion (thinly sliced. 1 large or 2 medium onions. 5 oz)
- 2 hot peppers (seeded and cut into rings. Banana pepper hotness)
- 75 g bell pepper (diced. Half of a medium-sized one, any colour.)
- 125 g pickling salt (⅓ cup / 4 oz)
- 2 dozen ice cubes
- 2 tablespoons peppercorns
- 2 tablespoons mustard seed
- 2 teaspoons celery seed
- ½ teaspoon turmeric
- ⅛ teaspoon cloves (ground)
- 400 ml cider vinegar (5% acidity or higher. 1 ½ cups / 12 oz)
- 300 g white sugar (1 ½ cups / 10 oz)
- Pickle Crisp (optional)
Instructions
- Wash cucumber well.
- Trim a very thin slice off each cucumber end; slice cucumbers length-wise into long strips 5 mm (¼ inch) thick. Put in a very large bowl.
- Peel and slice the onion thinly; add to bowl.
- Wash and prepare the peppers; add to bowl.
- Sprinkle salt over veg; toss with hands.
- Add the 12 ice cubes, and fold gently with your hands. Scatter remaining 12 ice cubes over top.
- Let stand 3 hours.
- Meanwhile, make a spice mixture from the peppercorns down to and including the cloves. Set aside.
- When the veg standing time is up, put vinegar and sugar in a pot on a low burner to start heating.
- Drain the veg well, pressing a bit to remove any excess moisture. Look through the mixture and discard any remaining small ice cubes.
- Mix spice mixture into the veg by tossing gently a few times with your hands.
- OPTIONAL: Put ⅛th teaspoon of Pickle Crisp in each jar, distributing the spices evenly.
- Pack the pickle slice mixture into half-litre (US pint) jars.
- Leave 3 cm (1 inch) headspace.
- Bring pickling mixture to a boil, then turn off heat.
- Divvy pickling mixture out among the jars.
- Leave 2 cm (½ inch) headspace.
- Debubble, adjust headspace.
- Wipe jar rims.
- Put lids on.
- Process in a water bath or steam canner.
- Process jars for 10 minutes; increase time as needed for your altitude.
- Best after at least a month of jar time.
Nutrition
Reference information
How to water bath process.
How to steam can.
When water-bath canning or steam canning, you must adjust the processing time for your altitude.
For salt substitute, Herbamare Sodium-Free was used.
For stevia, Better Stevia liquid stevia was the stevia used.
More information about Sugar and Salt-Free Canning in general.
Australia and New Zealand vinegar strength special notes.
Recipe notes
- You can omit the hot pepper.
- You might need more vinegar. If you do, you can zap it in a large measuring jug in the microwave to quickly bring it to a boil — or just use a pot on the stove.
- Instead of cider vinegar, you could use white vinegar (5% or higher), or a mixture of both.
- Instead of the salt, you can use a non-bitter, non-clouding salt sub. We have found Herbamare Sodium-Free performs well in that regard.
- You can reduce the sugar, or use the same volume amount of granulated Splenda®, or use 1 teaspoon of liquid stevia. For stevia, we’d recommend Better Stevia liquid stevia .
- When prepping pickling cucumbers, some old-timers advise to soak them in cold water for an hour or two to loosen dirt, then scrub each one with a vegetable brush. It may depend on how dirty you feel the cucumbers were.
Recipe Source
Peppery Hamburger Pickle Slices. In: Canadian Living Test Kitchen. The Complete Preserving Book. Montreal, Canada: Transcontinental Books. 2012. Page 124.
All Canadian Living home canning recipes are tested in Bernardin labs for quality and safety.
Modifications made:
- Swapped hot banana pepper for milder bell pepper, doubled amount of vinegar as more was needed for all the jars.
Nutrition information
(Roughly 20 pickle slices per jar, with each slice being about 5 g.)
Regular version
Per 1 slice
- 7 calories, 20 mg sodium
Sugar and salt-free version
Per 1 slice
- 3 calories, 0 mg sodium
- Weight Watchers PointsPlus®: 1 to 6 slices: 0 points; 7 to 18 slices: 2 points
Safety Check
This Canadian Living Test Kitchen recipe came in with a pH of 3.46, well below the safety cut off of 4.6
* Nutrition info provided by https://caloriecount.about.com
* PointsPlus™ calculated by healthycanning.com. Not endorsed by Weight Watchers® International, Inc, which is the owner of the PointsPlus® registered trademark.
* Better Stevia ® is a registered trademark of the NOW Foods Company.
* Herbamare ® is a registered trademark of the A. Vogel Corporation.
* Pickle Crisp ® is a registered trademark of the Jarden Corporation.
Tracey
If you’re not used to making pickles, you can’t get angry about the 3 hours stand time. And it’s marked in the instructions “3hours” stand time. You shouldn’t be upset. Read directions then read them again especially if new at this. Making pickles is the easiest thing around! And rewarding!
Robin
Instructions #7 Let stand for 3hours.!!!!! Did you fail to mention that at the beginning of the “easy to make part?” I’m pissed, my wife is pissed! Re read the prep time in your recipe. 3 hours stand time is not mentioned at al in the prep.
Mr. Not Happy
Healthy Canning
Part of learning how to work with a recipe is reading it all the way through first. That’s just basic.