Easy Refrigerator Dill Pickle Slices

This quick pickle recipe is perfect for those days when you’re only getting a handful of pickles from the garden. Instead of getting all of the canning equipment out for just a few jars of pickles, you can make this easy refrigerator dill pickle slices recipe with very little prep work. It’s also a great recipe to use for larger pickles that won’t get crispy in traditional canning pickle recipes!

Easy Refrigerator Dill Pickle Slices (aka Quick Pickles)

I’ve mentioned in my homemade garlic dill pickles recipe post that I’m having an HUGE harvest of pickling cucumbers this year. It’s been amazing! I’ve got 15 pint jars of canned homemade pickles in my pantry to get me through the year, which is WAY more than needed in a household of two people.

After I canned all of those pickles, I figured my pickle plants (learn how to grow cucumbers here) were done. Nope. I went away for the weekend, which naturally means the garden went bonkers and there were lots of things to pick when I got back.

Anyone who grows pickling cucumbers probably knows how that went. I swear those buggers grow about 2 feet overnight. If you don’t pick them at that ideal moment when they are perfectly small and firm, they are suddenly overripe and useless for traditional water-bath-canned pickles. Sigh…

On top of their larger-than-needed size, I only had about 15-20 pickles on the vines. Even if they were the perfect canning size, this is NOT enough pickles to take out all of the canning equipment and spend a few hours canning in the kitchen. 

I needed a solution for a small handful of slightly-too-big pickling cucumbers. And then I discovered the magic of refrigerator pickles. Refrigerator pickles, also known as ‘quick pickles’ is a great way to use up small batches of random vegetables from your garden. There are lots of quick pickle recipes for all sorts of veggies out there in internet-land, and maybe I’ll add other quick pickle recipes in the future. 

In the meantime, I decided to make refrigerator dill pickle slices. I chose to slice these pickles “hamburger style” since they were so big. I needed them to fit in just a few jars, and it sounded perfect to use them as slices on my burgers. I also found it helpful to also use them as “hamburger style” slices because I could cut off any bad sections easily.

Refrigerator Dill Pickle Slices Inspiration and Flavor

I based my quick refrigerator dill pickle slices recipe off of a recipe from my handy Ball: Complete Book of Home Preserving book. This awesome book is from Ball, the same company that makes mason jars, and they made sure to carefully select over 400 recipes for this book that are completely safe for canning at home. 

I changed a few flavors of the recipe while keeping the brine just the way the book states it should be. I don’t want to mess with brine ratios, even for a quick pickle recipe, because that’s what helps keep your food safely preserved.

I added more garlic to the recipe as well as using fresh dill weed instead of dill seed. I mainly added dill weed because I have not had luck finding dill seed at any local grocery stores. Also, dill seeds are great if you’re looking for a pungent caraway-seed-taste for your pickles. Fresh dill (either the leaves or the flower heads) will have a more “dill” taste like canned pickles. You can use either, but I really loved this recipe with the fresh dill.

Easy Refrigerator Dill Pickle Slices Recipe

Makes approx. 2 pint jars of pickle slices

Ingredients:

• 4 cups sliced pickling cucumbers
• 1 cup distilled white vinegar
• 1 cup water
• 3 tbsp. pickling salt
• 2 tbsp. sugar 
• 1 tbsp. pickling spice
• A few sprigs fresh dill weed (dill flower heads work too) OR 4 tsp. dill seeds
• 2 tsp. mustard seeds, whole
• 1 tsp. whole black peppercorns
• 2 cloves of garlic per jar, roughly chopped

Directions:

1. Slice the pickles and set aside in a large bowl.
2. In a large pot, mix the vinegar, water, pickling salt, sugar, and pickling spice. Bring to a boil, while stirring, then reduce the heat, cover, and simmer for 10 minutes.
3. Pour the brine over the pickles in the large bowl. Cover, and set aside for 30 minutes. 
4. Meanwhile, add a few sprigs of fresh dill OR 2 tsp. dill seeds to each jar. Then, to each jar, add 1 tsp. whole mustard seeds, ½ tsp. whole black peppercorns, and 2 cloves of roughly chopped garlic.
5. Add the pickle slices to the jars, when ladle the brine liquid over top. Make sure all of the pickle slices are covered with brine. 
6. Put on the lids, and let it marinate in the refrigerator for 2 weeks.
7. After those two weeks, you can start eating your refrigerator dill pickle slices.
8. Use them up within 3 months.

Notes:

**Did you know that there are many types of black peppercorns? They all taste different, too! Learn more about the culinary uses of black peppercorns here.

**Did you also know that there are different types of mustard seeds? Learn more about mustard seeds in this post.

More Preserving Recipes:

• 52 Fermented Food Recipes (No Whey Required)
• Garden-Inspired Italian Seasoning Recipe
• Homemade Quick-Pickled Jalapenos Recipe
• Roasted Hot Pepper Hot Sauce Recipe