KCAT Pickles
The ever favourite.
Ingredients
Day 1
- 3 baskets cucumbers
- 1/2 box pickling salt
Day 3
- 2 tablespoons alum powder, heaping
- piece horseradish root
Day 5
- 12 cups sugar
- 10 cups vinegar
- 3 sticks cinnamon
- 1 tbsp whole celery seed
- 10 whole cloves
Day 9
- 5 cups sugar
- 5 cups vinegar
Instructions
- On day 1, cover whole cucumbers with a salt brine strong enough to float an egg—generally 10 ounces of salt per gallon of water.
- On day 2, drawn the cucumbers and cover again with boiling water.
- On day 3, drawin and cut cucumbers into chunks. Cover again with boiling water, and add the alum and piece of horseradish root.
- On day 4, cover again with boiling water.
- On day 5, boil a syrup out of the day’s ingredients, placing the celery seed and cloves in a tied cheesecloth bag. Pour this syrup over the cut cucumbers.
- On day 6, drain the syrup and boil it. Pour this back over the cucumber chunks.
- Repeat this process on day 7 and 8.
- On day 9, make additional syrup with sugar and vinegar. Drain the syrup from the cucumber chunks and add this to the same pot, heating fully.
- Sterilize jars and ladle in the cucumber chunks. Cover with the hot syrup to within 1/4″ of top of jar, and seal.
Notes
- KCAT is the Kemptville College of Agricultural Technology. One year, the Food Sciences department tested countless recipes for 9-day pickles and this was judged to be the best.