Easy Homemade Pickles
You'll love these fresh homemade pickles! This recipe for dill refrigerator pickles is ready in 1 to 3 hours, depending on how you slice your cucumbers.
Updated by Kathryne Taylor on August 28, 2024
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What took me so long to make classic pickles? As it turns out, homemade dill pickles are simple, easy and delicious. They’re the perfect little summertime project, if you even want to call it that. These pickles are ready after a short chill in the refrigerator (as little as one hour), and they keep for several weeks.
These pickles are tangy and refreshing, nice and crisp, and offer garden-fresh flavor. They remind me of Claussen or Grillo’s pickles—but they’re even better. In short, I’m in love with this refrigerator pickle recipe and I think you will be, too.
These pickles are made with simple ingredients. You’ll need vinegar (I prefer rice vinegar’s mild flavor), fresh dill (technically optional, but delicious), a couple cloves of garlic, and a few basic seasonings.
I added a touch of sweetener, too—just enough to cut the bite of vinegar. These pickles are decidedly tangy, and nowhere near “bread and butter” territory. However, the sweetness level is entirely up to you.
These pickles aren’t overwhelmingly salty, either, yet they’re fully seasoned. They are irresistibly just right—perfect for burgers, for snacking, and more.
How to Make Pickles
These pickles are so easy to make! You’ll find the full recipe below, but here’s a preview:
- Slice your cucumbers as desired.
- Whisk together a basic brine made of water, vinegar and seasonings.
- Pack the cucumbers into a jar, add some dill and garlic, and pour the brine over it all.
- Refrigerate until the pickles taste sufficiently “pickled!”
Perhaps of note: Most of my other pickle recipes start with a hot vinegar brine, which helps the brine permeate tough vegetables. These pickles are made with a room temperature brine, which means that you can skip the stovetop step (and the intense vinegar smell that comes with it). Cucumbers are delicate and readily absorb flavor, so a cool brine yields pickles with the best flavor, texture and color.
Cucumber Slicing Options
You can use this recipe to yield any pickle shape, depending on how you slice your cucumbers. Thin slices will taste fully pickled sooner than thick spears (about one hour vs. three).
For cucumber rounds (or “chips” as they call them on the grocery shelves): Simply cut the cucumbers into thin slices (around 1/8 to 1/4-inch thick) .
For spears: Slice your cucumber in half lengthwise, then slice the halves into quarters. Finally, slice the quarters into eighths so they yield wedge-shaped spears. If you’re using a long cucumber, cut all the slices in half through the middle so they fit into your jar.
For sandwich slices: Slice off a strip of cucumber running the length of its long side. Turn the cucumber so it rests safely on the flat side. Then slice the cucumber, lengthwise, into 1/4-inch thick slices. Depending on the length of your cucumber, you might slice them in half or into thirds to suit your purposes.
Watch How to Make Pickles
Pickle Serving Suggestions
Serve these pickles with veggie burgers and other sandwiches, like these halloumi BLT’s. Try adding pickle rounds to your garden-fresh salads (they go well with tomatoes, carrots, radishes, etc.).
These pickles are also great light snacks on their own, and they’re nice, tangy additions to cheese boards and party spreads.
Craving more pickles? Try these:
- Quick-Pickled Onions
- Quick-Pickled Peppers (jalapeños and bell pepper) or Fresh Jalapeño Relish (easier!)
- Quick-Pickled Radishes
- Quick-Pickled Veggies: Featuring any combination of cauliflower, carrots, onions and/or jalapeño
Easy Homemade Pickles
You’ll love these fresh homemade pickles! This recipe for dill refrigerator pickles is ready in 1 to 3 hours, depending on how you slice your cucumbers. Recipe yields 1 medium jar of pickles (about 2 cups sliced pickles or 16 spears).
Ingredients
- 1 medium-to-large cucumber or 2 small cucumbers (ideally 12 ounces total)*
- ½ cup water, at room temperature or cooler
- ½ cup rice vinegar
- 1 ½ tablespoons maple syrup or sugar
- 1 ½ teaspoons fine sea salt
- ¼ teaspoon red pepper flakes (optional, for heat)
- 20 twists of freshly ground black pepper
- 2 leafy sprigs of fresh dill, roughly chopped (about ¼ cup)
- 2 cloves garlic, peeled and smashed
- 1 bay leaf
Instructions
- For pickle rounds (“chips”), slice the cucumber(s) into thin rounds, about ⅛-inch thick. Or, for spears, slice them in half lengthwise, then slice the halves lengthwise into quarters, then slice the quarters lengthwise into eighths. If your spears are long like mine (from one long cucumber), slice them through the middle so they’re not too tall for your jar. Set aside.
- In a liquid measuring cup or bowl, combine the water, vinegar, maple syrup, salt, red pepper flakes (if using) and black pepper. Stir until most of the salt has dissolved into the liquid, about 30 seconds to 1 minute. Set aside.
- Place the cucumbers into a wide-mouth jar about 3 to 4 inches in diameter, tall enough to offer at least 1 inch of extra space on top (for pickle spears, it’s important that all the pickles fit snugly, vertically—a wide-mouth pint-sized mason jar would work well).
- Top the cucumbers with the dill and garlic. Tuck the bay leaf into the side of the jar. Pour the all of the liquid over the cucumbers so they’re fully submerged. Cover and refrigerate for at least 1 hour (for pickle rounds) or at least 3 hours (for pickle spears). The flavor will continue to develop over the next couple of days. These pickles will keep for up to 3 weeks in the refrigerator.
Notes
*Cucumber options: For thinly sliced pickles, I love to use English (seedless) cucumbers. Kirby, Persian and garden-variety cucumbers will also work great. For pickle spears, use two Kirby or small garden cucumbers (about 6 ounces each). Or, use one longer garden cucumber (about 12 ounces) as shown here—you’ll just need to slice the spears in half through the middle so they’re not too tall for your jar.
Change it up: For sweeter pickles (bread and butter pickles), you’ll need to add a lot more maple syrup (which will make the mixture more brown) or sugar. Add it to the vinegar mixture, to taste, before pouring it over the cucumbers. Sweetness is so subjective!
Can I can it? No. This recipe is a “refrigerator pickle” recipe. It is not designed for canning in a water bath, and it has not been tested for canning safety. Please do not attempt! Follow a recipe specifically designed for canning instead.
Nutrition
The information shown is an estimate provided by an online nutrition calculator. It should not be considered a substitute for a professional nutritionist’s advice. See our full nutrition disclosure here.
This recipe is excellent. I used half rice vinegar and half regular white vinegar, and then used dried dill as I didn’t have fresh, and the compliments poured in. I have a huge cucumber harvest so family, friends and neighbors have tries the recipe…and many have requested another jar…
Great to hear, Rob!
I’m so excited about how easy this is! I read about the 3 week expiration but if we eat all the cucumbers the first week, could we just add more cucumber to the brine that’s left?
Hi Jackie, I suggest using your best judgement. I only used the brine once.
Where is the recipe
HI Ruth! It’s below the body section of the blog.
Hi Kate,
Can I use seasoned rice vineagar?
Hi, You can, although I like it best as written.
Love this recipe, so easy and delicious!
One question, can this be used to pickle okra? Or does okra need to be pickled with a hot brine?
This is best used as written. I haven’t tried it on okra, sorry!
Hi, My pickles turned out great, everyone loves them. However I’ve had so many pickling cucumbers, that I’ve made so many pickles. Why do they last only 3 weeks with the Vinigar?
Hi Sylvia! I’m glad these are a hit. I suggest to use your best judgement on how long they will last.
Thanks Kate! Best K.I.S. (Keep it simple) recipe out there.
Great to hear you love it, Kyle! I appreciate your review.
I recently tried this recipe with the cucumbers I harvested from the garden and we all love them. I do the spears with my dehydrated cayenne peppers and the round slices without the extra spice. I’m so glad I came across your recipes. I’ll be trying this with other vegetables..
I’m glad you came across it! Thank you for sharing, Patti.
The best pickles I ever tasted ‼️
Hooray! I love to hear that, Jacqueline.
Not a big pickle fan, but our garden is producing quite a few cucumbers, and well…I LOVE these pickles! We will be pickling, and perhaps adding some sweet banana peppers to the mix, as we are getting a lot of those ripening as well. Thanks for the great recipe!
Hooray! That’s great to hear, Nance.
I just made these! Question.. do you leave the dill, garlic and bay leaf in the jar for the 3 weeks or do you remove those after a certain period of time?
Can you sub white vinegar for rice vinegar?
I prefer it as written, but I know others have tried that and didn’t mind the results.
Have you tried freezing in a plastic sealed container?
I haven’t sorry!
Perfect quick pickle recipe!! We’ve been making this on repeat all summer. I skip the red pepper flakes and bay leaves and don’t even notice a difference!
I’m glad you loved this recipe, Kellyn!
Could you use garlic powder?
I don’t think you will get a great result. If you try it, I would be interested to hear how it goes.
Hello I’ve pickled cucumbers once and loved it! So I’m trying your recipe for my second time pickling and I can’t wait to see how they turn out! To the jars I added 1 crushed garlic, 2 sprigs dill, salt, maple syrup, 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper, whole black pepper corns, red pepper flakes, mustard seeds. And added corriander seeds to 1 jar. Mmm
Hey Kate, I’d love to try this recipe, however could I replace maple syrup and sugar with something else?
I recommend this recipe best as written. I hope you try it!
These pickles are so good and I don’t even like pickles. I made them for my boyfriend who loves pickles and tried a bite of one and thought omg… they’re delicious. I used baby cucumbers from Costco to make whole pickles instead of spears/rounds. It takes at least overnight for them to be ready this way since they are thicker and the flesh is not exposed. I only need to buy a bigger bottle of rice vinegar and find more jars so I can make several batches at the same time as he would eat this in one sitting if I didn’t stop him
Great to hear, Sophia!
Amazing! Delicious! Simple
! Taste like Clauseen but better cause I made’em. THANK YOU!
You’re welcome, Vanessa!
Okay WOW. This recipe was incredible. I really didn’t know how this was gonna turn out because it was my first time making pickles. Thank you for sharing!
You’re welcome, Maddie!
Love the flavor I will be using this recipe again
My whole family love these pickles, my grandchildren especially, they ask for me to make them regularly. These are AMAZING as is !!
Great to hear, Mary!
These pickles are so good. I only added a little more sugar and they are perfect.
Delicious! I didn’t have dill, but they still taste amazing.
They are so easy to make. This is the first recipe that I tried, and I’m happy to report that I won’t need to look for any other.
Thanks for the recipe!
I’ve been making this every week now. Thank you for such a great recipe!
These are the best!! We follow to a T besides the Dill we use dill weed from the local spice shop vs fresh since that is what we had on hand. Super yummy and we have reused the brine for a couple batches within the 3 week period and they taste yummy too!
So many fantastic recipes..don’t know which to try first. Thank you do very much..just going to go down the list and try them all….yum!!
You are the BOMB!!!!! Thnx!!
Hey! this seems very yummy and the receipe is very easy and can be understood easily for beginners. much appreciated.
Will these pickled cukes spoil quickly if not refrigerated? They have vinegar so I wasn’t sure if they would be OK to eat at room temp for a few days.
My pickles came out so good. I had everyone tasting them and they loved them. Thank you.
These are perfect!! We have pickling cucumbers from our garden and I am making my third jar now. I followed the recipe exactly as written and my family (big pickle eaters) love them! I made the first jar into rounds and the second jar into spears. As mentioned in other comments, they are a perfect mix of sweet, spicy, and vinegar-y!! Thank you!
You’re welcome, Rose! I appreciate your review.
Excellent recipe. WHat is teh volume or weight of the ground black pepper? My pepper mill has a very high output. If using died dill, how much to use?
THX
Can I use whole small pickles instead of sliced?
Hi Sandy! I recommend this recipe best as written with the two different variations. I’m not sure how well it would work without slicing the cucumbers. If you try it, let me know!
Hi, there.Just made three jars of your recipe using cucumbers. Waiting for them To be ready to eat.
Do you have any Recipes Zucchini?
Healthy Zucchini Muffins Here is one! If you search zucchini in the search bar, it will show you my zucchini recipes.
Hi, love these pickles, but could you be more specific about the amount of pepper? 20 twists of mine is about a tablespoon. Seems like a lot.
You can adjust to your taste.
I love these pickles! So easy, and a hit every time I make them. Thank you
You’re welcome, Mary!
I’m not even the biggest pickle fan but oh my after these I am! Delicious!
Thank you for your review, Selena!
Love, love, love this recipe!! It is so easy to make and keep. I’ve been doing it all summer now. I make one every week. At first I followed your recipe exactly and the pickles were excellent. Now, we play with the ingredients to make it spicier, sweeter, etc. My family loves it. No more store-bought pickles for us! Thanks!
You’re welcome, Rose!
Hi there I wanted to see if I can use this recipe and keep the cucumbers whole?
This is best as written. I hope you try it!
I have really been enjoying a variety of your recipes and am never disappointed! Even when I modify to our dietary needs they always turn out and I love how healthy they are! Thank you for sharing your amazing recipes! I was given some fresh garden pickling cucumbers and was wondering if this recipe would work with pickling cucumbers or do I need to slice them up to penetrate the cucs better?