Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Bread & Butter Pickles - 3 ways!

I just can't resist the allure of making up pickles to snack on over the winter and into next spring - I love bread & butter pickles. I made a promise to myself that next batch will be dilly - I'll do more dilly beans because the batches that I did with a half habanero quartered (but not separated) and pushed into the top of the jar turned out amazing!

Tonight, I turned my attention to the very large striped cocozelle and zucchini in the fridge, as well as 3# of 6" long pickling cucumbers from the garden. I also decided to take the last few unripe green tomatoes and sliced them up and did a bread & butter treatment just to see how it would turn out...

YIELD:
6 - 12 oz jars cucumber bread & butter pickles
4 - 12 oz jars zucchini bread & butter pickles
1 - 12 oz jar green tomato bread & butter pickles
1 - 8 oz jar green tomato bread & butter pickles

5 comments:

hmd said...

Mmmm! Those are my favorite kind of pickles! I mean seriously, they're the one pickle with some real calories attached. How can you not love 'em? :)

Jenn said...

Some calories, really? I guess if you drink the brine (because it has sugar in it) but certainly a jar of B&B pickles (if you don't drink the brine!) must have fewer calories than a Lara bar (say under 200)... it's just cucumbers and onions!!! They have practically zero calories.

hmd said...

If you look at the jars of pickles in the grocery store, B&Bs have more calories than any other pickle. I guess it's the sugar?

Jenn said...

OK - so, for a batch of B&B pickles, you use 3 cups of apple cider vinegar and 1 cup of sugar.

based on what I've read around, looks like about 770 calories for the sugar, and 150 for the vinegar - that puts us at 920 calories for the brine.


... and take into account that I was not able to use all the brine in all the jars (12-12 oz jars and one 8 oz jar). I'd say there was enough brine left for another 6 12 oz jars - so let's call it 18 12 jars worth of brine for jars packed with pickle = 51 calories

For the cucumber B&B pickles, the vegetables caloric counts are:


2.5 - 3# of cucumbers is somewhere around 200 calories (about 65-70 calories for a pound of cucumber with peel)

1# of onions is 190 calories

nice number - 390 - 6 jars = 65 calories

So - one 12 oz jar of cucumber B&B pickles = 65 + 51 = roughly 111 calories. If you eat the whole jar. Which is entirely feasible.

Yum.

hmd said...

I agree. Yum!