And it’s a no-cook recipe, too.
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My family can’t tell you the best wine for Thanksgiving dinner.
We don’t drink it.
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And there are no arguments about stuffing or dressing.
We’ve only ever eaten cornbread dressing, and we only ever will.
But we will put up a fight about pickles.
Credit:Kimberly Holland/Southern Living
She’s been gone 40 years now, but we still eat her pickles at every Thanksgiving.
And every Christmas, every birthday, and every Easter.
Before you reach for that jar of bread and butters in your refrigerator door, let me stop you.
These aren’t just any pickle, which is perhaps why they go with these rich and heavy meals.
In some places, you might call theserefrigerator pickles, but these don’t quite meet that definition.
For that bang out of recipe, you’re quick pickling fresh cucumbers.
For our pickles, you’re pickling already-pickled cucumbers.
I know right now you think we’ve lost our minds.
I honestly don’t know.
But they don’t.
Why Pickles?
I wish I could give you some detailed scientific explanation.
They are tart but not sour, sweet but not sickly.
They have tang with a little garlic bite and just enough sweetness to keep them from being tart.
A force of balance.
We get all that in the pickles.
No need to heat up a brine, no need to simmer pickling spices in vinegar.
This is the way my uncle and grandmother described it to me when I asked for the recipe.
Get a jar of whole dill pickles (46 fl.
), and empty the juice.
(Make thesePickle-Brined Chicken Tenderswith the leftover juice.)
Then, cut the whole pickles into 1/4-inch slices.
I like the thicker 1/4-inch slice; some of my family like them thinner.
Put the sliced pickles in a bowl, and sprinkle them with about 1 cup of sugar.
Add another cup of sugar, stir, and cover with the towel.
Let sit another hour or until the sugar is dissolved.
Empty the contents of the bowl back into the pickle jar, including the juice.
Add 3 to 5 crushed garlic cloves in with the pickles.
My uncle stresses you should check that they’re down in the pickles and not just floating on top.
Put the lid on the jar, and store it in the fridge until ready to eat.
The pickles need at least a day for the garlic flavor to infuse.
We feel certain soon it’ll be the first thing gone on your holiday table, too.
