Easy fridge pickles

This recipe works for just about any vegetable that you have going to waste in the back of the refrigerator. We did it with baby red peppers and string beans, and they turned out really delicious. We'll definitely be doing this with other veggies in the future, too!

Ingredients

[Makes enough to fill 3 quart-sized Ball jars]

~ 3 lbs. string beans, peppers, and/or whatever other veggies you want to pickle

3 cups vinegar

3 cups water

4.5 Tbsp. pickling salt

6 cloves garlic

6 Tbsp. dill seed

Procedure

Clean the jars in boiling water to disinfect. Put the garlic and fennel seeds into the bottoms of the jars.

To make the brine, combine the vinegar, water, and salt in a large pot until the mix comes to a roiling boil. While that's heating, put the veggies into the jars on top of the spices. Try to pack them in pretty tight. You may need to trim the beans if you're using pint jars or the veggies are particularly long, but I didn't find this to be an issue in the quart jars.

Pour the brine over the veggies, leaving about a 1/2 inch at the top. Stir a little bit to remove any air bubbles, put on the lids, and stick the pickles in the fridge for about a week (for full flavor). That's it!

Storage

These will last for a while (at least several weeks) in the fridge.

If you've canned stuff (like jam, or "real" pickles, or tomatoes) in your life, you probably know that there are more particular steps to be followed. One thing that's so great about this recipe is how easy it is, because the pickles last for a long enough time in the refrigerator to render serious canning unnecessary. But if you do decide to can them, this recipe will still be perfectly fine---you're just on your own for the canning procedure. This is what happened when we tried to do it:

And no. This is not our first attempt at canning. Maybe some people just aren't meant to be able to make pickles that can be stored indefinitely at room temperature. 

Variations

You can add red chili flakes for a bit of a kick, but as our household average spice-wussiness level is quite high, we haven't tried.