Bread and butter pickles are one of those things I like making when the garden starts giving me more cucumbers than I can use fresh. They’re fairly simple to put together, and they’re a good way to turn some of those garden cucumbers into something that will keep on the shelf.

I picked a little over 2 kg, or about 4½ pounds, of cucumbers from the garden thinking that should give me the 10 cups of sliced cucumbers called for in the recipe. I was wrong. I only needed about 3 pounds of cucumbers to get the 10 cups I needed.

That left me with some extra cucumbers, but at least I knew how much I actually needed for the next batch. Once the cucumbers were sliced, I sliced 4 medium onions and added them to the cucumbers.

I added ½ cup of pickling salt and mixed everything together. Then I covered the cucumber and onion mixture with cold water and left it at room temperature for 2 hours.

After the 2 hours, I drained the vegetables and rinsed them thoroughly to remove the excess salt.

For the pickling liquid, I used a 3-gallon pot and stirred together 3 cups of white vinegar, 2 cups of granulated sugar, 2 tablespoons of mustard seed, 1 teaspoon of celery seed, and 1 teaspoon of turmeric. I brought the mixture to a boil, stirring until the sugar had completely dissolved.

Once the liquid was boiling, I stirred in the cucumbers and onions and brought everything back to a boil.

From there, I filled 10 half-pint jars with the vegetables, leaving a generous ½ inch of headspace. I then topped each jar up with the hot pickling liquid, again leaving ½ inch of headspace.

I removed any air bubbles from the jars and checked the headspace again. I wiped the rims with a paper towel dampened with vinegar, put the lids on, and tightened the bands to fingertip tight.

I put the jars into the canner using two layers, with a rack between the layers. I also added some vinegar to the canner water to help prevent the jars from becoming cloudy.

I added hot water to the canner until the jars were covered by a little more than 1 inch of water and put the lid on.

The recipe called for a 10-minute boiling-water-bath process at elevations under 1,000 feet. Since I live at a higher elevation, I adjusted the processing time to 15 minutes. I’ve put the altitude adjustments in the recipe notes so you can adjust the processing time for your own elevation.

Once the water came to a boil, I started the timer. After 15 minutes, I turned off the heat and opened the lid. I waited another 5 minutes before removing the jars from the canner.

The next morning, all 10 jars were sealed.

I gave the pickles a full week before opening a jar to see how they turned out. They are very good. The cucumbers have a nice crunch, and the combination of the vinegar, sugar, mustard seed, celery seed, and turmeric gives them the sweet and tangy flavor I was looking for.

If you have more cucumbers coming out of the garden than you know what to do with, these bread and butter pickles are a good way to put some of them away. Just remember that you may not need as many cucumbers as you expect to get the 10 cups of sliced cucumbers called for in the recipe. For me, 3 pounds was enough.