Refridgerator bread & butter pickles

I find pickles disgusting.  Even just the smell.  I tell Matt to kiss me before he sits down with a jar of them because I can't even take pickle breath.  They are gross.  However, it appears, despite my best efforts, that I am outnumbered in that opinion in our house.  Matt loves them.  Luke will eat them.  So when we were offered many cucumbers this summer I knew what I had to do with them.

These pickles are incredibly easy to mix up and mostly just need waiting time.  I chose to do refrigerator pickles since I don't have all the canning supplies but I certainly would be open to that down the line.  I've made 4 batches of these this summer and each one was multiples of this recipe.  It's also nice, since I'm usually making as many pickles as I can with the cucumbers given, that the ingredients don't have to be spot on.  When I make 2 1/2 batches at once I just multiply and round.

Weird to be posting a recipe to something I have never tasted but Matt has declared these amazing (except for the batch I ran out of apple cider vinegar and got a little creative on using up other bottles of vinegar that I had).  He can easily eat a pint jar a night.

If you have a pickle lover and extra cucumbers (which are pretty easy to come by, seems to something people are always trying to get rid of!), I'd highly recommend these.

Refrigerator Bread & Butter Pickles

Ingredients:
5 1/2 cups sliced cucumbers
1 1/2 TB kosher salt
1 sliced onion
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 cup white vinegar
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
1 1/2 tsp mustard seeds
1/2 tsp celery seeds
1/8 tsp ground turmeric

Directions:
1) Combine cucumbers and salt in a large bowl, stirring to coat.  Cover with a towel and refrigerate at least 2 hours, up to 24. 
2) Rinse cucumbers well in a colander to remove the salt.  Drain.  Return the cucumbers to a bowl with the onion.
3) Combine the sugar, vinegar, and spices in a medium saucepan.  Bring to a simmer, stirring until the sugar dissolves.  Pour over the cucumbers and onions.  Let sit at room temperature for one hour.  Cover and refrigerate for at least 48 hours.

Honestly, I've completely skipped the simmer step almost every time I've made these because I completely forgot about it.  And Matt hasn't noticed a difference.  So if you want to save some time and a pan to wash then you can probably skip that step.  I've been storing them in canning jars with lids & rings but I think any sealed container would work.

source