What about making a relish? I add some crushed red pepper to the basic dill relish recipe & it's awesome on hot dogs, sausages

Not big relish fans around here - though I figured I'd use the biggest ones for slices or spears rather than whole dills like he wanted. I already cut the 4 largest up in spears and am brining them for Linda Z's Dutch Lunch Spears.

Anybody have any idea whether the smaller ones would be OK to pickle whole? They've been sitting out on my counter for 2 hours now while I made potato salad - these have to go in brine or fridge soon (except I just put the potato salad in the fridge and don't have room!).

The standard recommendation is to get cukes in brine or pickling solution within 24 hours of picking. Anything beyond that and there's a substantial risk of degradation of quality (particularly texture).

So it's a risk whether you'd end up with an optimal product or not. Your call.

Carol

I have always considered Straight 8 a slicing cucumber rather than a pickling cucumber. Hmmm...

Straight 8's to me are eating cucumbers - not pickling cucumbers. You might have better luck using pickling cucumbers if you want crunchy pickles.
Jim in So Calif

Well, I already started brining them, so will just make the Dutch Lunch spears (a refrigerator recipe, though Linda Z says it may be canned), and then decide what to do with the whole ones that I just the blossom ends off. My cousin said S8s could be pickled, and I'm making the pickles for him, so I'll let him decide how they are. I hope he has room in the fridge (he wanted them processed but I only had 3 lbs, and I'm afraid they'll be soggy if they're boiled). I'll can some for him from my pickling cukes once I get more than 2 a day.

I have always considered Straight 8 a slicing cucumber rather than a pickling cucumber.

Agree. Straight 8 is a slicing cucumber, not a pickling cuke. Always has been. But then some folks mistakenly think you can make pickles out of any cucumber. Their loss.

Dave

ajsmama,
You might think about making half sours or full sour brined pickles if you have a limited amount of cucumbers at one time.
The reason is that when fermenting pickles, you can pick and add what you have harvested to your fermenting vessel, and then in the following days, you can add more cucumbers to your crock as they come mature (mature does NOT mean big fat cucumbers - pick them little please). You don't have to have them all at once when you ferment.
While this may be more of a nuisance, at you can get a full "batch" by adding them incrementally if you have no other choice.
I just made a couple of batches with about a 21 day fermentation period, and while quite salty by my standards, they are wonderfully crunchy, and my wife loves the salty taste since I guess I deny her "unhealthy" batches of salt.
Jim in So Calif

I love half sours - use Linda Z's recipe by the quart and double or quadruple it if I have more (I have a variety of different-sized buckets). My cousin specifically wanted quick pickles, so I brought him 3 quarts, but I did leave my copy of Joy Of Pickling and recommended the Half Sours b/c they're ready in a week so that's the quickest pickle I know.

He has been using the "Brined Cucumber" recipe from the BBB which I never looked at - I was very surprised to hear it included vinegar! I thought vinegar retarded fermentation?

Vinegar will retard fermentation and I believed was used to make "pretend" fast quick taste kinda like pickles.
One recipe I regularly make and love was traditionally fermented but the folks now in Central America now just add vinegar and sugar and use it the same day.
It may depend on how much vinegar is used. A tablespoon may not do what a cup or two will do.
Jim in So Calif

BBB recipe "Brined Dill Pickles" he was using (and thought were too salty):

10 lb cukes
3/4C mixed pickling spices, divided
2-3 bunches fresh or dried dill, divided
1.5C canning salt (he used kosher so it's not even as salty as recipe calls for!)
2C vinegar
2C water
6 cloves garlic (optional)

Wash and drain cucmbers. Place half the pickling spices and one layer of dill in a clean pickling container. Add cucumbers to within 4 inches of top. Combine salt, vinegar, and water, ladle over cucumbers. Place a layer of dill and remaining spices over the top. Add garlic, if desired. Weight cucumbers under brine.

Store in a cool place. Let cucumbers ferment until well flavored with dill and clear throughout. Pickles should be ready to can in 2 to 3 weeks.

(Leaving out processing info - he never processed).

But half vinegar and half water to ferment??

There are many different types of pickles classified by ingredients and method of preparation. Brined pickles and fermented pickles are not the same thing.

Brined pickles will always call for vinegar as part of the brine and a 1:1 ratio of vinegar to water is the minimum safe recommendation. But yes, a small amount of vinegar is sometimes called for even in fermenting recipes and is usually, but not always, added after the fermenting process is finished.

Dave

Here is a link that might be useful: NCHFP - Pickled and Fermented Foods

Traditional cucumbers fermentation does not call for vinegar addition. Usually, just salt solution, dill seeds, some leaves for crunchness (horseradish, cherry, oak or grape), garlic, pepper (optional), other dry herbs or seeds (optional). Mustard seeds are great addition, as well as a litlle of turmeric for color.
Some people add whey, but in my opinion it gives unpleasant aftertaste to ferments. Cucumbers and cabbage ferment w/o any extra help anyway. If you want to speed things up or ferment something else, for example peppers, I found that Caldwell's culture is really helpful and does not give any unpleasant after taste.

Here is a link that might be useful: Starter culture.

I've seen recipes calling for brining the cukes for up to 24 hours in salt water (no vinegar) and then draining, packing, and pouring boiling vinegar/water solution over before processing. But this one seems strange b/c it "brines" them in vinegar and water and even calls it "fermenting" - which I guess it would after "2 to 3 weeks". But wouldn't they ferment faster/better in just a traditional salt water brine? What's the purpose of adding vinegar at the beginning rather than just when they're ready to can?

These would NOT be fermented pickles - as I said above that in El Salvador, CORTIDO was traditionally fermented for at least several days. Today however, they can do "fast Cortido" by just adding sugar and vinegar and serving it right away. It will of course lack all the great pro-biotic that would have developed had it had a chance to ferment. It will have a "bitey" taste from the vinegar which I guess the less knowledgeable think tastes like fermented food (or don't care).
And if you are going to can the cukes, I guess it really make no difference anyway. They will not be as crisp and all the good pro-biotics will be killed in the boiling water processing. They will however keep longer and you won't need any refrigerator space. I just made a gallon of full sours and 4 quarts is all the room I can spare in my refrigerator. My neighbor canned up over 100 quarts for the two of them and they will eat them for the next 4 or 5 years. They just have always done it that way. Not my cup of soup however.
Jim in So Calif

This is all just semantics. Don't get so hung up on labels and terms as it only confuses the issue. Canning isn't a world of purists when it comes to labels. In the case of pickle recipes they are just cucumbers fermenting/soaking/sitting in some sort of liquid with various ingredients.

There are "brines" made of just salt and water, there are "brines" made of water and vinegar, and there are "brines" made of all three plus all sorts of spices and herbs.

I've seen recipes calling for brining the cukes for up to 24 hours in salt water (no vinegar) and then draining,

That isn't "brined" just pre-soaking to draw water out of the cukes.

Sure you may never have seen many "brined" pickles recipes - recipes where cucumbers are soaked in a cool environment for days or even weeks or months in a mixed brine of vinegar, salt, and water. But they do exist, lots of them. Old country store barrel pickles are a good example. The old giant jar of pickles on the deli counter is another.

Many of the old "brined pickle" recipes are no longer considered safe due to listeria research but they still exist. Some of them evolved into what are now called "refrigerator pickles", some of them became what are now called "quick-pack" pickles, and some of them went more to the "fermentation" method with higher levels of salt and none or only a tablespoon or so of vinegar to slow (it doesn't stop) bacteria development.

Dave