How to Make Dill Pickles
by Colleen Vanderlinden • July 20, 2010 • Make It Yourslf, Preserving • 30 Comments
Pickles and I have a long history. When I was a kid, our family bought pickles from the supermarket like everybody else. Usually, it was Spartan brand, but every once in a while we’d end up with Vlasic or some other brand. One summer, in a totally uncharacteristic act of domesticity, my mother made refrigerator pickles.
Damn, were they good. She never made them again, though, and we went back to store-bought.
Fast forward twenty years or so. Pickles saw me through all four pregnancies. Some women get cravings for ice cream and pickles — I just wanted pickles. My husband has referred to me getting somewhat “scary” with the pickles a few times during my pregnancy with Elizabeth. I have no idea what he means.
Suffice it to say, I love me some pickles. I planted four varieties of cucumbers this year, three of which are pickling cucumbers. (An aside: a couple people have asked me what makes a pickling cucumber a pickling cucumber. The simple answer is that they have thinner, bumpier skin — the better to absorb all of that lovely brine with!) The pickling cukes are coming on strong now, so I decided it was high time to make up a few pints of dill pickles. I used this recipe because, as written, it’s good for making a small batch of pickles (three to four pints) but, even better — you can halve everything, and make just a jar or two if you don’t have that many cucumbers on hand.
First, you need to assemble your equipment:
You need a boiling water canner (if you don’t have one, a stainless steel stockpot will do. A cotton dishtowel folded and laid inside the pot will help stabilize the jars), pint jars, rings, and new lids. **If you want to forego the boiling water processing all together, you can also make refrigerator pickles with this recipe. If you do that, you can use any clean jar you want, and you don’t have to worry about having a pot to process your jars in. I’ll explain more later.
Not necessary, but it’s also helpful to have jar tongs, a magnetic lid lifter, and a jar funnel.
Fill the big pot so that the surface of the water is two inches higher than the tops of your jars. Place jars and lids in the pot (you can do lids in a separate pot, or the same one as your jars — doesn’t matter) and bring the water to a boil to sterilize everything.
While your jars are sterilizing, it’s time to assemble your ingredients.
You’ll need:
2 cups of white vinegar
2 cups of water (tap water is fine)
2 tablespoons of salt (pickling or kosher — not iodized table salt)
4 heads of fresh dill, or 4 tsp of dill seeds
4 cloves of garlic
8 to 10 cucumbers
In a saucepan, combine the vinegar, water, and salt, and heat over high. You want to bring this mixture to a boil. Meanwhile, start preparing your cukes. Cut a bit off of each end, if necessary, to ensure that the pickles will be about an inch shorter than your jar.
You can also cut them into halves or quarters if you want.
Once your cucumbers are ready and your brine is boiling, it’s time to get ready to add everything to the jars. Remove the jars (carefully!) from the boiling water canner. Add a head of dill and a clove of garlic to each jar.
Then, start packing your cukes in. You want to jam them in pretty tightly. This keeps them from floating in the brine.
As you can see, my nine cucumbers was only enough for three pints of pickles. That’s fine, it just means I’ll have some brine left over. Once you have them packed in, it’s time to pour the hot brine into the jars. Do this slowly, and use a jar funnel if that makes it easier for you. You want to fill the jars, leaving 1/2 inch of headspace at the top.
Use a flat spatula, butter knife, or bamboo skewer, and press the cukes together to try to release any air bubbles trapped in your jar. If you find that the level of the brine has fallen after doing this, top it up to keep your 1/2 inch of headspace.
Wipe the rims of your jars with a clean, damp cloth, set the lids on, and tighten the rings. You don’t have to go crazy tightening it — just finger-tight is good enough. The seal doesn’t come from the rings at all, but from the lid itself being vacuum sealed on as the contents of the jars cool after processing.
Place your jars into your boiling water canner, and process for ten minutes. Lift them out, carefully, and set them on a counter to cool. They’ll be quite warm for a few hours yet.
You’ll start to hear the lids make popping sounds. This means they’re sealing properly. After about an hour, all of your lids should have sealed. If you press on them and they’re solid, they’ve sealed right. If the lid still pops up and down, you don’t have a good seal. You can either re-process the jar in boiling water, or just put them in the fridge and eat them within a month. Properly sealed jars will keep for a year.
If you want to do away with the boiling water processing all together, simply add the cukes, dill, and garlic to any jar, pour boiling brine over it, cover, and let it cool down to room temperature. Then put your pickles in the fridge and eat within a month.
As you can see, it’s not difficult. And believe me, the flavor is definitely worth the effort!
Disclaimer: When you know you’re going to be photographing every step while cooking something, suddenly everything starts to look WAY neater than it ordinarily would. I am a very messy cook, and any hint at organization is merely a farce put on for the camera. But it’s ok — they turn out great whether you’re a messy cook or not 
Pickling Resources:
While this is a basic recipe I found online a few years ago (and it’s great!) my favorite book about pickling and canning right now is Homemade Living: Canning & Preserving with Ashley English: All You Need to Know to Make Jams, Jellies, Pickles, Chutneys & More. It’s a beautiful book full of well-written recipes that definitely inspired me to try different things in my kitchen. Definitely worth a look.
As you can see from the post, I’m still using traditional canning lids. You may have heard that these types of lids are lined with BPA — this is a concern for many of us, myself included. I do have some reusable, BPA free lids on order, but they haven’t arrived yet. If you’re interested, here is a source that Julia from Snarky Vegan shared with me.
For more pickle-y goodness, please check out this post I wrote for Planet Green: 20 Pickle Recipes to Help You Preserve Summer’s Bounty.
I just made pickles today also! I haven’t posted it on my blog yet. Nice demo!
Hmmm, this actually seems doable! I’ll try it in fall. Would sea salt work?
Monica — the flavor would be fine with sea salt, but the trace minerals in it would probably discolor the pickles. Not a huge deal, but that’s the main drawback.
Colleen, this recipe looks very non-threatening, especially the part about small batches and refrigerating the “mistakes.” We’re big pickle eaters at our house, so perhaps I need to give this a try. Bookmarked for future use!
Helen — It really is easy! I hope you give it a try
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Thanks for such great instructions! Made my first batch ever of pickles, and blogged about it here: http://suziofthestars.blogspot.com/2010/08/first-dill-pickles.html
Thanks for making it so easy
Suzi — I just checked out your post! Your pickles look great, and I’m so happy this post was useful to you!! Thank you
Wow, this recipe looks so easy! I have already made several batches of pickles this summer and need to make more, My first batches were made with a packet of spices I found at the store because I was intimidated while looking for recipes online (this is my first year pickling), but this looks just as easy as the packets! I am going to make them tonight! Thanks for putting this recipe out there!
These are awesome. My cucumbers were too large by the time I got around to doing it, but boy are they yummy, so yummy in fact I purchased pickling cucumbers from the store and I am going to make some more today!Thank you for sharing!
I’m another one who’s always felt too intimidated by canning to try it. But these DO look easy! Maybe I’ll try this next summer, because even with just a couple of plants we end up giving too many cukes to the chickens. How many plants do you think I should grow to put up 10 pints and have plenty for daily eating too? Would this work with zucchini? I love spicy pickles so I’ll add a couple of dried red peppers too. Yum. I just discovered your site while researching a weird squash I bought, the Galeux d’Eysines. The squash was good and your site is terrific!
I am new to canning and bottling things, I’ve only made tomatoes once before. But I followed this recipe and instructions without trouble and the pickles turned out great. I don’t even like dill pickles but I enjoy these, and same with my friends who’ve tried them. Someone even asked me to make sliced ones for burgers to sell in their restaurant! Thanks for the great walkthru!
I am new to canning. If the jars have sealed do I still have to process the jars in a boiler after canning?
I am a 54 yr old man who is a farrier (horseshoer) all my life, who gardens and my grandmother was Polish, my grandad Czech. I dont do it for lack of money, I like the taste, and even more, I love the feeling it gives me to stay connected to my heritage. I have a friend who I travelled by his produce stand in my travels making my rounds, he is a farmer trying to retire, and grows produce which he sells to the drive-up public. I suspect he enjoys the talking to the folks more than it is a financial thing. Quite sure of it. We do something between the 2 of us called bootstrap barter. I had a bunch of garlic, cowhorn peppers, he had the cukes, we swapped and talked forever. No money changed hands. I spent this evening listening to an old Gordon Lighfoot CD and put up 21 pts of dills. Bet your bottom dollar atleast 2 pts will be delivered to him. It is the way of the world, and going out of vogue all too fast where people dont care about each other. I cut my cucumbers at 4 inches to accomodate pint jars but the nubs and ends will become “slicers and dicers”. I never went hungry once in my life but was raised with an ethic that you dont waste food. I came up on a small dairy farm in SW Minnesota and I dont claim a name to fame because of it, but I still render lard, make head cheese, and scrub the funk off with lye soap. I hate to see a generation or 2 go down the tubes not knowing. I always had a good handle on how to handle a critter. My Dad taught me, not really meaning to, it was just his way. Before all the hype of horse whispering came into the scene, we were pulling calves from first-time heifers and knew that rubbing them down, handling them at zero hour, wiping the placenta off them, allowing a breathing passage, it all made for that calf seeing you as its mother so to speak, as much as the mother cow was. If I were money hungry or wanted to be documented and gain fame or fortune I dang sure have the wherewithal. I dont go on the internet often and only came here on a whim, wanting to speak my piece.
To get back to the topic, warm your lids, the gaskets will soften and make for a seal on the jar lids. Dont overtighten, you can squeeze thru the gasket by doing so and effectively have the metal of the lid against the rim of the jar. This is a common fault to those new to canning, thinking the tighter you screw them down the better. It goes against the grain to some but take this advice. ALWAYS remember to share. The whole process of canning can be labor-intensive, and you want to keep every jar for yourself. Give it up, dont fall down to greed. Give your neighbors, your kinfolk, your friends some. It is another thing that you can fall prey to, wanting to muster every jar, but DO NOT do it. The feeling you will get, and the appreciation of the others will make you feel so good that pint of tomatoes will have taken you way further than eating them yourself. I simply ask that you return the jar, and I will refill it the next time.
It is only as it should be.
You folks just getting into it should not be intimidated about canning. Learn first what are low acid foods safely processed in a water bath canner, and those best done uunder a pressure canner. My advice is to first take a look at a canning lid, take a feel of the gasket, know that it will become soft and form a seal on a jar neck. Get a knowledge of how cooling will create a vacuum, and you will be well on the road to processing food and will listen to the “pop” as a lid collapses. It is not an exact science, dont fear anything, you can do it as your forefathers did. I dont consider myself an earthboy guru, I am just a product of a farm. I have in the last 2 wks put up 28 qts of pickled beets, canned 42 qts of string beans, pickled (Dilly Beans) another 14 pts, used the excess pickling brine and hard-boiled a cpl dozen of my hens eggs, put some green food coloring in the mix, and have to explain to city folks just why my pickled eggs are green! If you are into enuf to grow a garden or have a source to get produce from, dont falter and take the next step. It’s harmless, do it. My mate of 21 yrs is city, go figure. She does not understand my ways and checks the expiration date on everything, trusting the USDA. But she forfeits all that and loves a can of string beans and has no question about it. Pickled beets the same. No wonder she loves me.
The good thing about canning/freezing/preserving is that when you have the source whether its a garden in your backyard or a produce stand, you can put up a large quantity of food all at once, fresh, in season, and it will last you a long time. I cannot very well speak against the USDA or the safety recommendations they set forth to protect the public, but in reality it is overkill. I served in the military 1974-1976 and at the time we ate C-Rations and K-Rations. Some of which was canned in the early 50s during the Korean War, and it was just as edible and safe as it could be. In the late 80s I was trail riding a horse I had recently bought and was in the Chirichaua Mts in SE AZ, came upon a fire lookout tower, ran into 2 employees of the Forest Service. We ate canned green chilis that were so old the cans was mostly rust, and had canned gov’t pork patties the same. I have only been sick twice in my whole life because of food. The first time was some bad peas from the mess hall and half of the 1st Squadron 1st Cavalry was doubled over. The second time I ate some snails at a Chinese buffet near Ft Hood, TX in Copperas Cove, TX. Never once did home canning fail me, my family, or all our neighbors and friends who at the time & day put a lot of stuff in a jar and processed it. I am not here to rant and rave, but simply because I would like to think a few folks might read this and not only can some fresh stuff but get into gardening, or support your local produce farmer. You must remember, and allow a grain of salt to enter your mind when you read advisories from the USDA, that this is the same dept that allows feedlot cattle run-off to run into lettuce fields in the Salinas Valley and then once the e-Coli hits makes excuses as to why it happens. I dont have a gov’t badge or wear a white apron but through trial and error eclipsing many generations and ethnic backgrounds I can feed myself safely any day of the week. I made 21 pints of dill pickles last night and the leftover cukes I have and nubs and ends, will be made into bread & butter pickles and some ground up to can relish. I have a client who I shoe horses for that planted thornless blackberries and has a pick-yur-own place and in the next day or 2 I am going to pick a cpl gallons, make some jam, freeze some for cobbler, let some rest in the fridge and invite the neighbor kids over with vanilla ice cream on hand and let them be kids. The further this world advances thru technology, the more I feel a drive to step it back to a better day as I see it. I am at fault in my own way with this PC, but I dont have a cell phone, a telephone & answering machine are enuf headache but necessary evils to conduct my business by. I am over 50 yrs old and my partying ways and days are long since over, I am home most every night and can be reached. It drives me crazy to see the new age with phones stuck to their head, cant drive a vehicle or do a grocery shop without an Ipod or thing hanging in their ear or whatever it is. I hope it is ok to say so here, no offense meant, but last night after listening to the lids pop and clean-up, I put a Gordon Lightfoot CD into my player and rolled one up grown (just the one, personal use, none has ever been marketed or made its way to kids), and enjoyed gettin jiggy with my 60 yr old ol lady and we both look hideous physicly and know each other so well it will be a sad day when one of us goes and the other left alone. I had to train her, and thats the truth. She came from city and was a cold fish with herself as the agenda when we met. I introduced her to country ways and how to live with peace of mind. We had both had our storied pasts and been around the block when we met. She had made a living for herself boarding and training horses back in TX, but she had a cruel hand to say it true, and I showed her how to love, how to get on the same page as an animal, how you do not beat anything into anyone. When it was put right in front of her there was no denying it. She once told me you are too country and dont have a good business head about you. I know inside she is right, and if I wanted to be rich/famous I could have been the original Horse Whisperer. I just always got my inner fix in showing the owners how it is done and watching the horses respond. At the ripe young age of 54 I certainly dont advertise myself as specializing in widowmaker horses but I have taken the need of a vet coming by to tranquilize out of the mix. It all goes back to my upbringing, many a lesson was learnt on my knees in our garden on the farm, with 2 of the best simple country parents, interacting, talking, lessons in patience and dilligence. I could not wait, and bugged my parents to sign for me to go into the army, and finally they did. I knew there had to be something out there other than the snow, cold winters, milking cows. For all the gripes I had at the time and how badly I wanted out, guess just who came full circle? I called my sis last night as pickles were processing. She is 9 yrs my junior. She gave me the news, and said she was dreading it, her husband didnt understand that she cried for 4 hours. Our house we were raised in has been levelled and demolished. All the memories I have. How Mom and Dad kept it up, the rock cellar, the place was built in 1861, with upgrades and remodelling. We never had plumbing until I was 16, we had a chemical toilet and pumped water out of the cistern and heated it in a masonry crock heater fueled by kerosene, took our baths in a double porcelein sink. Those were the days, and my Dad, Mom, my grandparents lived much rougher coming up. My Dads mother (grandma) was named Mary Kubesh. All Polish. She raised geese not to eat but to make goose lard out of, and she sewed and made all our pillows (goose down feathers) and comforters all along. She knitted, crochetted, and embroidered.She made kolaches, a Slavian pastry, and poppy seed and prune filling was standard. Her husband, Frank Sr., my grandpa came from Bohemia and was the hard-working type we all are in the family. When they retired grandpa dug grandma a small garden plot and grandma raised only 2 things- dill and cucumbers. She kept all of us in dills, bread n butters, sweet dills, relish,
they broke the mold when she was born. It is because of her, my heritage, my upbringing, that I am here on a pickle site. I realize I have gotten lengthy but sometimes things need to be said.
By “process” do you mean in a pressure cooker canner…and if so, at what pound pressure and for how long?
Jeff, I thoroughly enjoyed reading your comments on dill pickling. It was both informative and colorfully written. I’m up there in years also, and have had a tooth for the dill pickle since the days when for a nickel you could dip wooden tongs (sometimes just your hand) into the neighborhood store’s pickle barrel for a crunchy treat on a country summer day. Anyway, until a few years ago my favorite pickle station had been Costco, then, all of a sudden, no pickles—going on three years. Why they stopped carrying those gallon, restaurant quality jars of dills I don’t know, because palates loaded with pickles would fly out of the store. Well, I’m tired of buying high priced jars of chemically treated pickles from the super markets; Costco is now on my ignore list; this year I added a seed packet of pickling cucumbers to my veggie garden list.
It’s the middle of July, and I’m up to my ankles in beautiful, unblemished pickling cucumbers. After browsing numerous sites on pickling “How-Tos,” I found this site–inthegarden.com–and read Colleen Vanderlinden’s well written and visually informative pickling article. I was so impressed with the quality of her instructions and tips that I took the time (which I rarely ever do) to read some of the comments, and I must admit, your three comments caught my eye. I now have all the encouragement and information necessary to embark with pickle making…I’m going to try both methods. Thanks again, wish more sites covering other topics were as together as this one.
I love the easy to follow instructions. I made pickles for the first time ever. I was not as hard as I thought it would be. I do not know how long they need to sit before you eat them. All of me jars sealed to I did not have any left for the fridge. How long do I wait before I open a jar?
Thanks
This is an awesome site and I appreciate the hard work you put into it. I have two questions as this will be my first pickling experience:
1. Do you have to have pickling cukes or will any do?
2. What do I need to do to make sure the pickles are crunchy?
When I was a kid my mother made pickles and for whatever reason, I remember them being a little mushy. Again, thanks for an awesome site!!
Thanks, Matt!
1. You can use any cucumbers. Pickling cucumbers absorb the brine more easily, but I’ve made them with regular cukes as well and they turned out just fine. My recommendation, if you use regular cukes, would be to cut them in half or into spears so they absorb the brine better. The skin of regular cucumbers is thicker, so the brine doesn’t absorb into it as well. If you decide to try it with regular cukes, and cut them into spears, I’d forego the hot water processing and just make refrigerator pickles. They’ll stay crisper that way.
2. If you’re making these as refrigerator pickles, and plan to eat them fairly soon, you don’t need to add anything. If you’re doing the hot water bath processing, you can add Ball Pickle Crisp (I’ve found this at my local hardware store in the canning section, but you can also order it from Amazon) to the brine. I’ve also heard people say that adding one fresh grape leaf to the jar before you seal it up will keep the pickles crisp, but I haven’t tried that method yet.
I hope this helps! Good luck!
Hi Amy!
I’ve eaten pickles within a week of making them, and they tasted great. For optimal flavor, it’s best to wait a few weeks, but if you can’t resist, go ahead and try some
Bill –
I haven’t tried them in a pressure canner. By “process” I just mean to boil them in the hot water canner.
Ashley — If they’ve sealed after going into the boiler, you don’t have to put them in again. Only boil them a second time if they didn’t seal the first time around. Though, I’d really recommend just treating any that don’t seal the first time around as refrigerator pickles — the double-processing can result in soggy pickles.
Just followed your instructions for the first time ever, trying to make Dill Pickle. I’ll let you know how they turn out. I’m having nice success with my cucumbers, and I love Dill pickles. I’ve canned tomatoes, salsa, and spaghetti sauce successfully , in the past, so I thought I’s give this a try. Your instructions are easy to follow. Thank yu so much for posting them, as well as the photos. i noticed that you didn’t use any pickling spices . Why ? I didn’t either, but was wondering why you didn’t use them in your recipe. Thank you again. It’s so nice to find sites like yours, that help out a guy like me.
Just a follow up, I used Ball Pickle Crisp and tried two different ways, refrigerator version and the boiling for 10 minutes version. I let the refrigerator version sit for 24 hours while letting the other version sit for 6 days before I could no longer resist. I must say they both came out very tasty!!! Thanks a lot for the tips!! By the way, they were very crispy even without the pickling cukes!!! That Ball Pickle Crisp must work miracles.
We used to live in Illinois, and our pickles were always crisp. When we tryed canning in Colorado, they always turned out mushy, We used the same recipe. What causes mushy pickles?
I made my first batch of pickles EVER using this recipe last week. I tasted them for the first time today and I must say, THEY WERE GREAT.
Highly recommended and wicked easy!
I bought pickling spice in the store with the idea to add it to a recipe for enhanced flavor. Though… the problem lies in having no direction on just how much to use for each pint jar. Would you just dump a teaspoon in each jar or how would you go about using it?
Hi Amber!
You could go about it a couple of different ways. You could add about a teaspoon of the pickling spices to each jar, and then add your cukes and the hot vinegar as the recipe instructs. Or, you could add 2 to 3 tablespoons of the pickling spice to a bit of cheesecloth, tie it up, and toss it into the vinegar mix, then bring it all to a boil together. The spices will flavor the brine this way, and you won’t have to bother adding some to each jar, since the flavor will already be in the brine.
Thanks for stopping by!
Colleen