Polish sweet-and-sour pickled cucumbers, crunchy, for winter
Cucumbers in a vinegar brine with sugar, mustard seed, dill and carrot, pasteurised for only a quarter of an hour so they stay crunchy. Brine proportions easy to remember: per litre of water, a cup of vinegar, a cup of sugar, two tablespoons of salt. Six jars, ready in a month.
Your own work in that: 25 min.
- Cucumbers soaking 60 min
- Packing and brine 25 min
- Pasteurising 15 min
- Cooling 20 min
Step by step
0 / 7 doneSoak the cucumbers
Scrub the cucumbers and cover with cold water for an hour. Rehydrated, they stay firm through pasteurising; limp ones turn soft.
Ingredients: 3000 g pickling cucumbers · 6 pcs flowering dill heads · 2 pcs carrots · 1 pcs onion · 6 cloves garlic · 1 pcs horseradish root · 3 tsp mustard seeds · 12 pcs allspice berries · 6 pcs bay leaves · 12 pcs black peppercorns
An hour in cold waterPrepare the aromatics and jars
Peel and slice the carrots, cut the onion into rings, peel the garlic, cut the horseradish into batons. Scald six 900 ml jars and their lids with boiling water.
Carrot, onion, garlic, horseradish, spicesBoil the brine
Bring the water with the vinegar, sugar and salt to the boil, stirring until the sugar dissolves. The brine must be hot when it goes in.
Ingredients: 1500 ml water · 380 ml spirit vinegar, 10 % · 300 g sugar · 3 tbsp salt
TipThe ratio to remember: 4 parts water, 1 vinegar, 1 sugar by volume, plus 2 tablespoons of salt per litre of water. Like it sharper? 5 : 1½ : 1.
Water, vinegar, sugar, salt: boilPack the jars
In the bottom of each jar: a dill head, a garlic clove, a few carrot slices, 1–2 onion rings, a horseradish baton, half a teaspoon of mustard seed, 2 allspice, a bay leaf, 2 peppercorns. Pack the cucumbers tightly, upright, to 2 cm below the rim.
Spices at the bottom, cucumbers tightPour and seal
Pour the hot brine over the cucumbers to cover them, 1 cm from the rim. Wipe the threads and screw the lids on tightly.
Hot brine up to the neckPasteurise briefly
Stand the jars in a pot lined with a cloth, add hot water to three-quarters of their height, bring to the boil and pasteurise 15 minutes from the boil, over low heat. Lift out, stand upside down 10 minutes, turn upright.
TipA quarter of an hour, not half. Long pasteurising is the main cause of soft pickles.
Fifteen minutes, no moreWait a month
The cucumbers need 4 weeks to take on the brine. In a dark pantry they keep 2 years. For sandwiches, vegetable salad, beside a cutlet.
After a month: crunchy, sweet-and-sour
Before you start
Without pasteurising
Pour boiling brine over the cucumbers twice: pour the first off after 5 minutes and boil it again. Hot sealed jars pull down on their own. Shorter shelf life, about six months.
With pepper or chilli
A strip of red pepper for colour or a small chilli for heat, in each jar. The rest unchanged.
Hollow cucumbers
Too big or too old. For pickling choose the smallest, up to 9 cm, firm, from the market the same day.