Brown Sugar Pickles
You can have delicious pickles in under 30 minutes with this method. Then after you eat all the pickles, you have free juice for pickleback shots.
Ingredients
Kirby cucumbers
1 cup warm water
1/2 cup rice wine vinegar
6 tbsp. brown sugar
2 1/2 tsp. kosher salt
1-2 bay leaves
crushed red pepper to taste
palmful of whole black peppercorns
1. Slice the cucumbers into pickle shape. I like chips because spears are for psychopaths. I prefer Kirby cucumbers because they have thick skins and keep their snap even after pickling, but any cucumber will work.
2. Combine all the ingredients except the cucumbers and whisk everything really well. Some notes on the “technique”:
The warm water should be enough to dissolve the sugar. If not, pour everything into a small saucepan over a medium flame and whisk until the sugar dissipates.
Add as much or as little red pepper as you feel like. If you add too much, lol oh well.
Using whole peppercorns vs. cracked pepper lets the natural fruitiness of the black pepper shine in your pickles. If you don’t have whole peppercorns, that’s cool. Cracked or ground pepper will just have a more spice-forward flavor.
3. Put the pickling liquid and sliced cucumbers into an airtight container. Cover and let the pickles sit in the fridge for 30 minutes to 1 hour. The longer the pickles sit, the more flavor they’ll pick up from the liquid. If you need the pickles right away for a Cubano or something, 30 minutes is fine.
Notes:
I’m not a food scientist or anything, but I’d probably try to eat the pickles within a month.