NINETEEN YEARS AGO ALMOST TO THE DAY, I ate pickles for breakfast with lovely Dan Koshansky, a retired railroad conductor and an organic gardener in suburban Long Island. I was garden editor at Newsday newspaper then, and the beat included many a recipe tasting at harvest time. It’s how I learned to garden, and to cook from the garden: from people like Dan. Today, on our second of a series of weekly Thursday Food Fests in collaboration with Everyday Food’s Dinner Tonight blog, I want to share his recipe with you. Enjoy.
Dan Koshansky’s Refrigerator Pickles were a hand-me-down recipe from his mother. And they couldn’t be simpler. Those in the photo (top) are from a batch I made many years ago (photo by Kit Latham).
The recipe:
Wash jars: Run gallon canning jars through the dishwasher or wash thoroughly (smaller jars can be used if desired).
Prepare your brine: To each quart of water that has been boiled and brought to room temperature, add ¾ cup of distilled white vinegar and 4 Tablespoons Kosher salt (Dan would say “heaping Tablespoons”). Estimate how many quarts to make depending on how many jars you will pack with pickles. Note: Do not use reactive pots (like aluminum) for making brine. Stick with stainless and glass equipment for pickling tasks.
Wash and pack small cukes (or green tomatoes or peppers) into clean glass jars, into which fresh dill has been layered on the bottom first.
Add 1 Tablespoon of pickling spice and lots of chopped garlic. (Trust me, I can still recall the garlic-for-breakfast experience. Up to you how much. And frankly I never chop it, as you can see in the photo. Creative license!)
Add a dash of crushed red pepper flakes, or 1-2 small hot red peppers slitted open lengthwise, plus more fresh dill. I love having the flowerheads from a variety like ‘Mammoth,’ instead of just the foliage of ‘Fernleaf’ for this task, but you’ll want plenty of both.
Cover with plastic wrap and let stand out until soured, perhaps a couple of days, then refrigerate with lids on.
I think of these unprocessed pickles as a seasonal treat, So I make enough for a few months only. If you want to store pickles all year, use a recipe that calls for water-bath processing (meaning vacuum-sealed lids). It’s not that refrigerator pickles go bad, but they lose that special quality. It’s the crispy freshness that makes Dan Koshansky’s Refrigerator Pickles so fantastic, a real rite of the harvest season, so enjoy them summer-into-fall and then (as gardeners know how to by necessity) start looking forward to next year.
Added note: Sometimes pickles get too salty. In summer 2010, thanks to Deb at Smitten Kitchen blog, I found out why. Not all Kosher salt brands are created equal.
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HOW THIS CROSS-BLOG FOOD FEST WORKS:
Now go visit Deb and the Everyday Food folks to get yourself a good hearty zucchini entree or something, but not before you leave a tip or recipe behind here (or a link to your best food-gardening tip or recipe, if you’re a blogger). Thanks for attending our second weekly Food Fest…see you next Thursday for Beans (and Aug. 14 for Tomatoes…and…).
into the drink: making pickles, drowning beetles 
cukes ‘n zukes: size matters, as does pickling spice 
I realize this post is last year, but I just read it and got inspired. My pickles are in the frig. I’m alrealy harvesting cucumbers here in California.
Thanks for the recipe!
Welcome, Debbie. Yes, a year-old p[ost but a decades-old recipe…and good as when it was first developed, I suspect. I make them every year. Glad to hear the recipe was pleasing. See you again soon!
Just used this recipe – my kids are so excited! Why cover with plastic the first couple of days instead of putting on the lids, out of curiousity?
Welcome, Heidi. You know, I don’t think I know the answer. I just always follow Dan’s original advice, and so far so good, all these years…just like his mama used to make. Glad your kids are getting the treat of participating. Aren’t the packed jars gorgeous? See you soon again.
Hmmm, I’m not working tomorrow, maybe I’ll make pickles!
A PS: I want to make sure to point you to the fresh-from-the-jar pickle-making post by my friend Shauna, and also her appreciation of pickles in general, which I just came upon after posting this. She is wonderful (and I bet her pickles are, too).
any success with making these pickles from sliced cucumbers? have you ever added in onion?
i may have to make these tomorrow afternoon – they look delectable. thanks for any further information.
Welcome, Carolina. There was also a refrigerator “bread and butter” pickle recipe from my old friend Dan, and I will have to find it (sweeter, with sugar in the brine, too). The cukes were sliced. Here’s the thing with these: Since they are not hot-packed (“canned” or “preserved”), but are refrigerator pickles, they don’t stay put but keep aging the longer they are in the jar. Hot-packing sort of suspends animation; refrigeration doesn’t. If you slice the cukes, the shelf life will be even shorter, because the brine will permeate and age the cucumber really fast. You could try a small batch sliced, and eat them up sooner maybe?
As for onions, you can experiment, but I have not tried.
Margaret, I made these yesterday, keeping the pickles whole and sans onion. I ended up having to make my own pickling spice b/c I did not want to go to the market so we shall see…but I did add plenty of garlic and dill and a few hot, dry chiles – I can’t wait to tuck into these! Thanks for sharing this recipe.
ps let me know if you do find that ‘bread + butter’ recipe
I’m trying this recipe for the my first ever attempt at pickle making. I have three questions. What is a “couple” of days? Will leaving the the cucumber in longer, say a week, make them any better or do any harm? Can the brine be re-used after I remover the pickles? Thank’s, I’m looking forward to my pickles.
Stephen
Welcome, Stephen. They will start to taste like pickles in a few days. They will be more “dill-ish” in a week or two or three. They stay nice for weeks or maybe two months in the fridge, but the flavor continues to advance and get stronger, because they are not “hot-packed” like the ones int he supermarket. So eventually they get soft or too strong; not dangerous, but not tasty and crunchy anymore. No worry here, I have eaten them all before that. :)
Don’t re-use the brine, as the water in the cukes will have changed the concentration (acidity, flavor, salinity) and not a good idea. See you soon again with news of your first pickles.
Just wanted to say thank you for sharing this recipe, I used it yesterday to create my first batch of pickles and I was amazed at how good they are only 24 hours later. :)
I wrote a blog post about it here:
http://www.howtomakechickensoup.com/chicken-soup-blog/made-a-batch-of-pickles
Welcome, Scott. You would make Dan Koshansky (and his pickles) proud. :) Thanks for the feedback, and do stop in again soon..maybe one of the next few Tuesdays to share some recipes and links you like for other food tips and dishes?
Hello,
I am going to make these pickles, mainly because they sound wonderful, but I want to know something. Do they have to be stored in the fridge, or can you seal them and put them in the cellar?? Why I want to know is lack of space in the fridge, and also to keep them for later dates.
I also have a Bread and Butter recipe I got of the Better Homes and they are for the fridge. Can I seal these good and store them.
I want to know what the differance is in both kinds.
Welcome, Dan. The thing about cold-packing pickles (not processing them in a hot-water bath and “canning” them) is that they must be refrigerated, and must be eaten fairly soon (in a month or two, or so). If you want to do another approach, you can either hot-pack you pickles (not from my refrigerator recipe, but by finding one for hot-pack pickles!) or maybe try a Dill Crock a la Euell Gibbons, the folksy hero of the 60s and 70s who made it famous. Here’s that recipe.
i read every word, you make gardening magical. Do you have help for a cherry tree that looks great but the bark is coming off and it looks like it is bolting from the ground.
Welcome, Dorothyann. Thank you for the kind words. Tricky question since I cannot see it, and many kinds of cherries have peeling bark (often said to be one of their attractive attributes, sometimes revealing glossier “skin” beneath). But you sound concerned and it doesn’t sound like you think it looks pretty.
Do you know what variety of cherry (or at least whether it’s a flowering ornamental type or one for fruit particularly? pink or white blossoms, and are they puffy doubles or single?). Tell me more about the “bloting fromt he ground” part.
I love sour garlic pickles and I am excited about finding this recipe! The kosher pickle manufacturers, like Ba Tampte and Schoors, have stopped making sour garlic pickles. Can you imagine!! Anyway, I’ve been buying some inferior pickles from a local kosher market, but nothing to match the “real thing” when I lived in NYC.
I just did my first batch from Dan’s recipe and I can’t wait to see how they come out!! Thanks so much for sharing.
Welcome, Bocaboy. The great thing about Dan’s pickles is that you can eat them half sour, or very sour (depending on the time they age) and can adjust the garlic and other spices really easily with each batch until you find your signature style and flavor. I will look forward to hearing a full report. See you again soon, I hope.
I just love the refrigerator pickles——-so easy and so good. Next time I will add more garlic! Thanks for the recipe. In my town we have the best spice shop—if you need pickling spices or anything spice related. The name is Atlantic Spice Co. They are a wholesale shop with a retail outlet. Look up http://www.atlanticspice.com – you will love it!!
Welcome, Judy. Glad you liked the recipe; yes, Dan always said “lots” of garlic, and he meant it. And thank you also for the link…fascinating. Hope to see you soon again here.
I’d love to try this recipe but am having a hard time finding pickling spice. margaret, I live near you and have tried my local supermarket and Agway. Any ideas about where to get pickling spice in Columbia/Berkshire county?
Welcome, Laura. I have always just bought it at the supermarket, usually by McCormick (the familiar brand of spices you find in most basic supermarkets). Here it is from their website. There are other brands (e.g., Morton and Bassett) in places like KMart and so on, as well as supermarkets — and both those brands can be had online if you search. Hope that helps.
how long do these pickles “last” in the fridge?
Welcome, Patty. They last a couple of months but the flavor advances unlike hot-packed pickles, which sort of stay stable once canned. So it’s good to make progressive batches (not 10 jars right now) if you have a successive cuke harvest. So the last batch you make (in fall) will be good until the holidays approximately, if that make sense. They don’t spoil; the just get too strong-tasting eventually.
do you set these outside for the 2 or 3 days or inside,people were telling me outside in the sun, then to the fridge, i was just a little afraid of that.
Welcome, Kim. I don’t put mine in the sun; I find they mature and are ready plenty fast enough just left out in the kitchen. But I know that some people do that. I don’t think in that brine you can brew much botulism (heaven forbid!) but I prefer to stick to an indoor preparation style, too.
I made the frig pickles this weekend, my first attempt. I just checked them and the garlic, (which i crushed) appears to have taken on a blue hue. Any idea if that typically happens or what it means?
Welcome, Nancy. I have seen this too. If you Google “garlic in pickles blue” you will see that it is a natural thing…it doesn’t stay white. Under acidic conditions the anthocyanins in garlic will turn color.
This is my first try at pickles and I was was thrilled to find they taste like my families favorite brand that we find here in Cleveland delis and grocery stores(Don Hermans Kosher Dills). I’m still tweaking the salt as the 4 heaping TBs of kosher salt were too salty. I keep going back and forth between pickling salt and kosher and adusting down to 3 lightt Tbs. They were a hit. Too bad my dill is gone from the garden as the pickling cukes still keep producing, off to find more dill…
Welcome, Debbie — and what great news! Yes, sometimes they are saltier than other times; hard to say why. Happy as can be to please you and yours with this recipe. See you soon again!
@Debbie: A bit of information that may help us understand the salt thing….apparently not all brands of Kosher salt are created equal. Read about it here.
If I take them out of the brine (but still store them in the fridge), do you know how long they should last? Thanks for the recipe and for maintaining the Q&A!
(I know you suggest leaving them in the brine and eating them over the course of a couple months, but I’m short on space in the fridge and would like to get those jars out of there…)
Welcome, Ryan. Not sure that’s a safe way to store them (the brine contains the preservative ingredients, after all). You don’t want to grow mold on your pickles. I suppose you could leave some out of brine for a little while (a week? like any refrigerated food) but I would hesitate to do it longer unless I found a solid reference (like the USDA or Ball Canning Guide or Rodale or etc.) that said it was safe. Hmmm…