Cucumbers, Pickles, Relish…

Well you cannot say we are not blessed. One week ago 2 bushels of cucumbers were dropped on my doorstep; well, actually, he brought them all the way in and left them in the middle of my kitchen floor. Which is none to large and since trying to move around them as a centerpiece was just to difficult I had to do something with them ASAP.

I had my first order of business, to make 50 jars of bread and butter pickles for the church auction. Oh look, that used less than a ¼ bushel…what to do with everything else.

While this only used ¼ bushel, it took 16 hours to do alone and I didn’t even what to think about more bread and butter pickles, besides, I don’t like them. A little research and several conversations with people who had tried this method I was assured that the very best dill pickles ever come from an old fashioned recipe called “Old Fashioned Brined Dill Pickles” or “Old Fashioned 3 Week Pickles”. This recipe involves slicing the pickles according to your liking. Mixing 5 gallons of brine and layering pickles, spices and fresh dill & garlic in a 5 gallon bucket with the brine and letting them sit for 3 weeks before canning. So that recipe is in progress at the moment; if it turns out a success I will post it for those who are curious.

One 5-gallon bucket of whole dill pickles and another of sandwich slices and I still had cucumbers left. So off I sent several bags of them with my aunt to be made into salads, snuck into veggie dishes and made into Indian food. She brought me back a very delicious dish with paper-thin slices of cucumber mixed with dill, chives and sour cream, yum!

With still a drawer in my fridge full of cucumbers I decided to tackle making relish. Here I was met with a challenge. Every recipe I found contained a large amount of bell peppers, which I am allergic to. It took about three days of research to find the solution. In a relish recipe the vegetables themselves are not as important as the bulk of veggies so if you are short on one ingredient or, as in my case, allergic to one of them, you can sub it out for another vegetable of equal bulk. So with this in mind I took several relish recipes and 32 cups of shredded cucumbers and came up with the following recipe for relish. I did actually find people online with the same allergy who were looking for the same solution but none had yet been offered, so for those of you who are allergic, or just don’t like bell pepper here is the relish recipe for you! (It can be scaled down, I just had this large an amount of cucumber so I gave you the recipe as I did it. Remember the jars make great gifts!)

"Pepper Free" Relish

32 cups of cucumbers shredded
12 carrots shredded
(you can also sub in celery for some of the carrots if you like)
1-2 onions shredded
1 whole head of garlic peeled and separated into cloves
(add these to your veggies when shredding)

14 cups cider vinegar
2 ½ Tablespoons dill seed
1 ½ Tablespoons celery seed
1 ½ Tablespoons mustard seed
1 cup pickling salt


Mix your shredded veggies together and let stand in the fridge overnight then strain the liquid out of them, you can reduce the amount to be strained off my squeezing gentle when you mix the veggies and discarding the resulting liquid.

In a large stockpot mix vinegar and spices and stir until the salt dissolves. Add the veggies and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for 10 minutes. Fill hot relish into clean, hot pint jars leaving ½” head-space. Wipe rimes of jars with damp, clean paper towel and apply lid. Process in boiling water bath for 15 minutes. Let cool, undisturbed, for 24 hours and check seals.