So you come home from a few days away and find these waiting in your cucumber patch. Should you throw them on the compost pile or is there something you can do with them? My Danish friend Lisbeth shared this recipe with me a few years ago and I now share my overripe cucumbers with her so we can both make up a batch of delicious pickles. First you peel and split the cucumbers lengthwise then scoop out the seeds. I call this the “dugout canoe step.”
You then put them in a non-reactive pan, salting each layer generously, and let them sit for 24 hours. After 24 hours they have generated a lot of moisture. Rinse each one off with fresh water and let them drain (or pat them dry).
Next mix up a simple sweet and sour pickling liquid of equal parts sugar and white vinegar and add pickling spice. For these (about 3 pounds) I used 3 C. sugar to 3 C. vinegar and a tbsp. of pickling spice. Bring the pickling liquid to a boil and slip in as many pieces as will fit loosely. When the liquid returns to the boil, remove the pieces and pack them loosely in sterilized jars.
When all the pieces are in the jars, fill the jars with the remaining pickling liquid and add a sprig of fresh dill to each jar. How you seal the jars depends on how you plan to keep them. They keep forever in the refrigerator or you can put them through the canning procedure to seal them for storage at room temperature.
Five to ten minutes in a boiling water bath ensures a good seal. If you like a bit of “zing” in your pickles you can add a few more red pepper flakes to the pickling liquid. The Danes add peeled baby onions to the mix. After two weeks they are ready to eat. Pull out a “canoe” and slice it as you wish. The flavor is like a softer watermelon pickle. Yum!
A Naturalist's Table 