Pickling
Crunchy, tangy and ready in the pantry
Pickles, relishes and chutneys turn a glut of cucumbers, beans or beetroot into something you will reach for all year. The vinegar does the preserving, so a big pot of boiling water is all the canner you need. Every recipe here is tested, and the process times are worked out for your altitude.
Tested recipes only, in Australian units.
The recipes
Find a recipe
Search by crop or recipe name, or browse the lot. Open one to see how much it makes and how long it keeps.
Bread-and-Butter Pickles
- Makes: About 8 x 500 mL jars 1
- Keeps: Best quality within a year once processed in a boiling water canner and stored cool and dark.
- Crops: Cucumber
The full recipe is for members on a paid plan: 9 ingredients, 3 steps, process times for each altitude, in Australian units.
Please read. Keeping times are for best quality and come from published home preserving guidelines. They are a guide, not a guarantee. They only hold for a tested recipe followed to the letter, jars that sealed properly, and storage that is cool, dark and dry, or a freezer at minus 18°C. Look at, and smell, every jar and bag before you eat from it. When in doubt, throw it out.
Before you start
How we keep this safe
- Tested recipes only. Every recipe here comes from published home preserving guidelines. We do not invent preserving recipes, because a guess in a jar can make you sick.
- Follow the recipe to the letter. The amounts, the jar sizes and the times are part of what makes it safe, not a suggestion.
- The vinegar keeps it safe. Use the vinegar, salt and amounts the recipe lists. Never water the vinegar down further or squeeze in extra vegetables, because the acid level is what keeps a pickle safe in the jar.
- Fridge pickles say so. A recipe marked “fridge only” is not processed for the pantry. It lives in the fridge from day one.
- Australian units. mL, grams, millimetres and degrees Celsius. The conversion is ours. A tablespoon in these recipes is 15 mL, not the 20 mL Australian tablespoon.
- When in doubt, throw it out. A bulging lid, a broken seal, a smell or mould means the bin, not a taste test.