This sweet pickle recipe was Alan’s Mother’s recipe. These are some of the best sweet pickles I have ever eaten!
Sweet Pickle Superb
16 lbs. cucumbers
1 box pickling spices
1/2 box alum (2 1/4 oz. per box)
10 lb. sugar
1 cup salt to each half gallon of water – strong enough to float an egg.
Soak whole cucumbers in salt water for seven days. Pour off water and soak in alum water over night.
Pour off Alum water and rinse. Cover with vinegar. Let stand six hours. Throw away vinegar and put a layer of cucumbers and layer of sugar and spices (layer after layer). In a day or two syrup will rise. They will keep indefinitely without sealing.
Great job. These pickles look amazing. So my question would be on the pickling spice as I bought in bulk. I’m halfing the recipe and read other comments about the alum. So I’m good there. Just don’t know the right measurement for the pickling spice. Any help would be appreciated.
These sweet pickles are delicious! Thank you for sharing recipe! I finished making them a week ago and I tried them today and oh wow so yummy!
Would love your dill pickle recipe using this process. I do have a German fermenting crock and would love to try my first go around with dill pickles!
How big are the boxes of spices and alum? I won't have 16lbs of cucumbers to do but I really want to try these. They look awesome.
Hi, I'm attempting your pickles. I started another way then ran across your recipe, I soaked mine for 24 hours then drained them. They were left another 24 hours covered in fridge. Can I still proceed with your recipe? Also how do they keep without processing?
I actually tasted mine before I added sugar and spice, they were great. Soooooo, I'm gonna try another batch with dill, layering and adding vinegar or maybe hot water, whatcha think?
Thanks so much for your video. We had an abundance of cucumbers in our garden this year and I wanted to try to make the sweet pickles my grandmother made that I remember from my childhood. My grandmother has been gone a long time as is my Dad so I reached out to my Aunt to see if she had the recipe….She got back to me and found it written on a scrap of paper. I'm going to type it as she read it to me. Because I'm a beginning pickle maker I have lots of questions. Here is the recipe:
Use medium to small cucumbers. Soak in brine that will float an egg for 10 days. Cover with cloth wash out as pickles get scum on. Cut as desired. Drain and wash and cover with cold water with 1 Tablespoon Alum to a gallon of pickles. Drain and add alum for second day. Rinse off on 3rd day and add syrup of 1 Quart vinegar, 2 cups sugar, green coloring may be added with this. Heat vinegar and sugar and put 2 sticks of cinnamon and one teaspoon celery seed and 1 Tablespoon whole cloves tied in cloth. Boil 5 minutes then pour over pickles. Pour off each morning and add 2 cups of sugar for the next 3 mornings. Put in bottle and put on lid.
Some of the recipe is vague. Here are my questions:
1. "Cover with cloth wash out as pickles get scum on." Do you think that means to wash out the cloth?
2. Would you be washing the pickles after the 10 days before cutting?
3. "Drain and add alum for second day." Does that mean to discard the water from the previous day and put fresh water and alum in?
4. Does the spice bag get discarded after boiling for 5 minutes? or do you put the spice bag in with the cucumber/vinegar mixture?
5. " Pour off each morning and add 2 cups of sugar for the next 3 mornings." I interpret this to mean drain but keep the liquid and add more sugar and put back over the pickles. What do you think? Would you boil it again or leave it cold?
6. Sounds like she didn't seal or water bath them either. I actually didn't know you could do it without processing in a steam or water bath.
I don't really want to burden you, but after watching several sweet pickle videos, your video was the closest to her recipe.
If you have any advice for me, I would love to hear it. (She put green food coloring in her pickles, I remember them being really green!)
I live in California, but she lived in Idaho and she and my grandfather were farmers.
Thanks,
Cindy White
cwhite1333@yahoo.com
209-672-7108
Fellow Mississippian here. These are very similar to a pickle I've been making for decades. I have a clear glass 5 gallon "jar" that I use to store them. I had a workman tell me it was the biggest pickle jar he'd ever seen! I thought you might appreciate that as y'all seem to love them as much as we do. I've had a large batch last years when we couldn't get fresh garden cucumbers. (i.e. I rationed them severely)
Thanks so much for sharing this, I could hear the crunch of the pickle near the end, I'll have to try these as my wife prefers sweet pickles over dills. My folk used to make all kinds of pickles and passed it on to me, they even had the same stovetop, seeing it brought back a lot of great memories. Thanks!
Nothing "easy" about this recipe.
I am definitely going to use this recipe this year when my cucumbers come in. It looks so good! I found the stoneware crocks with weights on Amazon. But I do have one question, where did you get the Dyno-mites shirt? It is so cute!
Just like my Great Grandma used to make!!! Im going to try this recipe thank you so much to Alan's Mother!!
would sugar substitue like "Swerve" work?
I love this sweet pickled recipe … Thank you for sharing .. watching from Philippines ❤️
I'm looking for a sliced cucumber in crock recipe like mom and dad made. Im going to try tweaking this a little, silcing first soaking half the days.
Enjoyed you video! Did you seal your jars at the end?
Question, why soak in vinegar if they're fermented? Nice video.
Doing it that way does it smell up the whole house?
Wonderful recipe!!! where did you get your crocks and what size are they?
replying. IM not mistaken, did you not use 2 can of pickling spice for thr 16lbs.
im from clarksdale miss
Alum = aluminum does this not trouble you?
I followed recipe and they are amazing pickles. I eat them for snacks all the time. They are better than any other pickles I have tried, thank you for sharing
I'm planning on making these in a couple of weeks while I'm out recovering from surgery, these look so good! Have you let them sit in the vinegar longer than the 6hrs? Just wondering if that would change the flavor at all. Also like your husband's shirt midway through, go Cats!
So, just to be certain- you don't seal the jars. You don't refrigerate them. They will keep in the pantry with just a tight lid?
These pickles are wonderful! I'm always on the lookout for food preservation techniques that don't require refrigeration. What do you do if you don't end up with enough syrup to fill all the jars? I'm going to mix up a sugar solution to the approximate concentration produced during the process.
It's hard to find food grade alum here. Is there any possible substitute for that?