Bread and butter pickles are easy with this recipe from SimplyCanning! (2024)

FAQs

How long do home canned bread and butter pickles last? ›

Properly canned bread and butter pickles can be stored in a cool, dark place (like a pantry) for up to 1 year. Store opened jars in the fridge and use within 3 months. If you skipped the water bath canning, transfer the cooled jars directly to the fridge and eat within 3 months.

Dill pickles have one main spice/herb that's used: dill. They're often on the sour side with a strong briny bite. In contrast, bread and butter pickles use a blend of turmeric, clove, celery seed, and red pepper flakes for a rounded-out flavor. None of the spices stand out, but all blend together for a richer taste.

Bread and butter pickles usually have a few more inclusions than sweet pickles – none of them actually being bread and butter of course. These extra ingredients are usually onions, green or red peppers, and various seeds from coriander, mustard, and celery plants.

Use Calcium Chloride

Sea salt is sodium chloride. In this case, we're talking about calcium chloride! These little granules, which dilute quickly in water, are THE trick to crunchy pickles, as they prevent the enzymes from softening the pickle during lacto-fermentation.

Using too weak a salt brine or vinegar solution may cause soft or slippery pickles, as can using moldy garlic or storing the pickles at too warm a temperature. These pickles are spoiled and should be discarded.

At some point, all pickles will be refrigerated (unless you can eat an entire batch in one go). Canned pickles must be refrigerated once they're opened. Putting fermented pickles in the fridge slows the process to a crawl, keeping them at your preferred flavor and crispness.

Any vegetable can be pickled, and pickles can be part of a healthy diet. Eat bread-and-butter pickles in moderation to limit added sugars, and keep an eye out for sodium too—if you already eat out or eat foods high in sodium, a pickle spear or two per day could push you over the limit.

Fermented pickles are considered a probiotic food, which means they contain beneficial strains of bacteria that, if consumed often, can contribute to the population and diversity of our gut microbiome.

Today, the term is well known as a sweet pickle, like my Bread & Butter Chips. These pickles are sweeter than my dills, but they still have that pungent garlic flavor.

McDonald's uses dill pickles in their burgers including in the Big Mac®.

Why am I craving bread and butter pickles? ›

Cravings for salty foods like pickles can sometimes indicate an electrolyte imbalance in the body. Electrolytes are essential for maintaining hydration and overall bodily functions.

But Why Are Its Pickles So Good? It turns out that the pickles Chick-fil-A gets from Bay Valley are a little different from standard pickles. The company selects cucumbers specifically for size and texture, of course, but what really makes the difference is the brine.

They act as natural preservatives, helping to maintain the firmness and texture of fruits and vegetables during the pickling process. When added to pickling brine, bay leaves infuse the cucumbers with these tannins, ensuring they remain delightfully crunchy even after months of storage.

Adding natural tannins such as grape leaves, black tea, or oak leaves can delay the softening process and keep your pickles firm. This is entirely optional and only works if your cucumbers aren't already soft.

Most fruit preserves and pickles are sufficiently high in acid to be canned via a method called water bath canning, where jars are submerged in boiling water for a prescribed amount of time. This destroys any pathogens in the food, and creates a seal, thereby rendering the jars shelf-stable.

“We recommend that you use them within one year,” she says. “And that's more of a quality issue than a safety issue. From a safety standpoint, they should be fine for an extended period of time as long as people canned the food properly.”

As long as the can is in good shape, the contents should be safe to eat, although the taste, texture and nutritional value of the food can diminish over time. Home canned foods should be used within 1 year.

As the research shows, if a food is in a can, it can hang around for quite a while. Travel Food Atlas, for instance, claims that canned bread has a shelf life for up to 2 years, while Skilled Survival says that canned bread can last far longer than 2 years — up to 10 years, in fact, provided the can isn't damaged.

How Long do Fermented Pickles Last? To store fermented cucumber pickles once they're done fermenting, take off the airlock cap, close with a regular lid, and store in the refrigerator. Once fermented, these pickles can last months up to a year. They're so good, I doubt they will last that long before getting eaten!