Classic Bread & Butter Pickles (No Canning Required!)
This recipe produces classic bread and butter pickles—the kind my mom used to make every summer when I was a little mouse. They’re sweet. They’re tangy. They have a fabulous crunch. Like my Quick, Fresh Pickles, there’s no canning required for these babies (in fact, they just need an overnight soak in the fridge). And, honestly, they don’t need to be canned. This recipe only uses about 4 pickling cucumbers. Your pickles will keep for a few weeks in the fridge—which is more than ample time to gobble them up.
Top juicy, grilled burgers with a few pickles. Chop them up for an impromptu relish. Or, you know, just eat ‘em straight out of the bowl.
I slice my cukes up with a regular knife. For an extra fancy bread-and-butter pickle, use a crinkle cutter to produce a scalloped edge.
They get their fabulous yellow-ish color from a small dose of ground tumeric (a little goes a long way).
Ground tumeric
I was out of whole celery seed when I made these this time, so I used ground celery seed (not celery salt) instead. It worked like a charm.
Ground celery seed
Be sure to use a heatproof bowl for your cukes. (You’ll be pouring the boiling brine right over them.)
Oh, about the rice wine vinegar
Rice wine vinegar typically comes in a few different forms, mainly seasoned and unseasoned.
Seasoned rice wine vinegar already has a fair amount of sugar in it. Be sure to get unseasoned rice wine vinegar for this recipe. This lets you to control the sweetness, flavor, and amount of sugar in your pickles.
Classic Bread & Butter Pickles
4 large pickling cucumbers
1 cup unseasoned rice wine vinegar
1 cup water
1/3 cup white balsamic vinegar (or white wine vinegar)
6 Tbls. sugar
1 tsp. kosher salt (for the cukes) + 2 Tbls. kosher salt (for the brine)
1/2 tsp. mustard seed
1/4 tsp. celery seed (or ground celery seed)
1/4 tsp. ground tumeric
Makes 4 – 5 cups of pickles (liquid + pickles)
Slice and salt the cucumbers
Grab your cukes. Wash them well under cold water and pat ‘em dry.
Nip off each end with a sharp knife and discard. Then cut each cuke into slices.
Make the slices as even as you can, but don’t make yourself nuts.
Toss them into a medium-sized bowl.
Sprinkle with 1 teaspoon of kosher salt.
Mix them around to distribute the salt.
Let the cukes sit like this on the counter for one hour. This helps to draw water out of the cucumbers, which will help them stay crunchy when they’re pickled.
After about an hour, you should have a fair amount of water in your bowl. Drain the sliced cukes and discard the liquid.
Layer the pickles in a bowl.
Be sure that your bowl is heatproof.
Make the brine
Put the rice wine vinegar, water, and white balsamic vinegar in a medium-sized pot.
Add the sugar and 2 tablespoons of kosher salt.
Whisk to combine. Set the pot on the stove over high heat.
Cook, whisking occasionally, until the sugar and salt completely dissolve.
Leave the mixture on high heat. Toss in the mustard seed, celery seed, and tumeric.
Whisk the mixture occasionally, and cook on high heat until it comes up to a boil.
Pour the brine over the cucumbers
When the mixture boils, take it off the heat. Pour it over the sliced cucumbers.
Let the pickles cool uncovered until they reach room temperature.
Soak the cucumbers overnight
Then cover them with plastic wrap and pop them in the fridge overnight.
The next day, they should be have developed a deeper yellow color and a fairly intense pickle-y flavor.
And that’s it! Your pickles are ready to eat. Keep them in the fridge for a few weeks, if they last that long.
Serve and enjoy!
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28 Comments
I love bread and butter pickles! And considering I have a lot to learn when it comes to canning these are perfect. So glad to have this recipe. Thanks!
Yummy!! Hurley is a fan of these pickles, whenever we have burgers or some kind of sandwich he always asks for bread and butter pickles
These pickles remind me of my youth. My mom made them. I have never canned so this version intrigues me. GREG
This looks so easy and yummy.It looks like a fine idea for this weekend.
Great homemade pickle recipe! Thanks! When you’re done making your pickles, you can use them in this Pickle, Olive and Imitation Crab Meat Pasta Salad
What a wonderful pickle recipe! I have always avoided making pickles at home because it seems like such a long process. I love how simple this is. Thank you for sharing!
Jessie,
Will this work with regular cucumbers??
Oh gosh, I’ll bet it would. I’d use the skinniest cukes you can find, so they’re not super full of seeds. Let me know if you give it a whirl?
+Jessie
Grumpy was telling me about making refrigerator pickles…I have never done it because I never seen it done before! I’ll have to try this out and make Grumpy HAPPY!
Oh gosh, you should! They’re so easy.
+Jessie
I would love to make these pickles but it’s difficult to print the recipe without the pictures. Can you send me the recipe so I can print it? Thanks. Gloria
You made pickles…and the making of them…looking beautiful!
Awwww, shucks. Thanks so much, Bridget!
+Jessie
Yeah babe! Love em!
Thanks, hon! I’ve been in pickle heaven lately!
+Jessie
I’m mad about these but have never made them! Thanks for the recipe.
I love the step-by-step directions with all the great pictures. I am looking for a recipe that can be canned and kept over the winter. Will this work?
Wow, I want these pickles… NOW! I’m such a sucker for bread and butter pickles, but I had yet to stumble upon a fast pickle recipe. Love it!
well, I too am pickling and preserving and so this was great. Some incredible pix too. Not to mention my love — for decades now — of bread and butter pickles. Hurrah
This recipe makes me SO HAPPY! Not only do I now I have a recipe for fabulous B&B pickles but I don’t have to wait a few days for them to be ready!
Thanks so much
I’ve been looking for an easy B&B pickle recipe and this looks great! I was wondering, after the pickles are ready, can you still stick them in a jar? I’m not worried about preserving them for later, it’s just that I share a fridge with 2 other people and there tends to be little room.
Oh, you can absolutely keep them in a jar! In fact, I think the only thing I wouldn’t store them in is plastic that you plan on reusing. (Plastic can absorb tastes and smells…)
Cheers!
+Jessie
Just wanted to give a thumbs up to these pickles. I have been making refrigerator pickles of all types for a couple of years now and these are every bit as good. I plan to make many more changing up the ingredients here and there to experiment. Thanks for the recipe
Duane
if I wanted to can these…..do I do that after the overnight in the fridge? Or can I skip that and can them after they reach room temp.?
Heya,
A bunch of folks have asked if these can be canned, so my apologies for the delayed reply!
I don’t see why not, although I’ll be the first to admit: I almost always make small batches of pickles & jams because I don’t have a ton of room to store preserved goods. If you have experience canning, let me know what you recommend! Sorry I can’t be of more assistance on this end! Let me know how it goes if you try it?
Cheers!
+Jessie
I’m doin’ it today with your recipe…..I’m not gonna skip the overnight in the fridge part. All the recipes for canning a bread and butter type pickle call for a certain amount of time at a chilled temp. So I will can them after the overnight soak. I’ll let you know how they turn out. And no…..counting these pickles I will have exactly two canning experiences.