The most difficult part of this recipe is the wait!
We visited Grandpa’s garden and he had a whole lot of cucumbers growing this week (Get ready for some tomato recipes too… Grandpa has a lot of tomato bushes!). After we ate a cucumber right in the garden, Grandpa still had a whole lot left, so we decided to make a fun summer snack: pink pickles! To turn a cucumber into a pickle all you need is salt, vinegar, and a little bit of time.
Once you’ve come in from the garden (or home from the farmers’ market or store), wash and dry your cucumbers then slice them. Peel the paper off of your onion and slice it. Next, mix in the salt and wait for 2 whole hours. This is the hardest part!
When the timer goes off, drain off the salt and all the liquid that has formed. Next, put the cucumbers into jars, or any container with a lid that can live in your fridge for a while. Glass will work better than plastic or metal. Mix your vinegar and sugar together, then pour it over your the cucumbers and onions. Stir it up and have a taste! They aren’t pickles quite yet, but rembember out they taste now so you can compare the flavor to what they taste like tomorrow!
Leave the mixture overnight, and when you check on them in the morning they will be pickles, and they will be PINK! This is because the red in the onions comes out and floats all around. Yum!
You can eat these pickles on a burger, with cheese and crackers, mixed into a salad, or just by stabbing a few with a fork and eating them plain. What food group do pickles belong to?
