dan koshansky’s refrigerator dill pickles

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. I want to share his recipe for how to make dill pickles, refrigerator style, with you. Enjoy.

making dan koshansky’s pickles

THESE PICKLES were a hand-me-down recipe from Dan’s 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 or half-gallon canning jars through the dishwasher or wash thoroughly.

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 notes

• 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. And:
• What’s in pickling spice? Some recipes.
• Zukes, you say, not cukes? Pickling zucchinis, too.
• Prefer your pickles sweet? Try Viola Whitacre’s 1952 recipe for bread and butter pickles (above photo).