How To: No-Can half sour refrigerator pickles

Anyone who has lived with me knows I LOOOOVE pickles, I mean love them, like could eat a whole jar of pickles, like my fridge is rarely out of pickles. My first memory of awesome pickles, is eating some of Gramma's home made canned pickles. I've been chasing that taste ever since, but canning pickles is a pain, so I like to make these No-Can half sour refrigerator pickles. They are so easy and taste nearly as good.

Now the key, as I see it, to good pickles, is good pickling cucumbers. They should be pretty uniformly green and ripe, not over ripe(bloated and yellowish with few warts is over ripe), firm, and mostly free of defects.

First gather your ingredients.

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  Large Jar (I use an old gallon pickle jar)-which has been sterilized (you can run it through the dishwasher, OR you can immerse it in boiling water for 15 minutes)
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  Pickling cucumbers roughly 3-4 pounds, but it's hard to say because I eat alot of the cukes on the way home....
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  1 grape leaf (if you can't find one it's ok, but it does help keep them crunchy. I found mine growing wild at the beach in RI. If you pick 'em wild make sure you are sure about what you're picking!)
• 
  
  1 piece rye bread with seeds
• 
  
  1 onion
• 
  
  5-6 cloves garlic peeled
• 
  
  dill (some use heads, I prefer sprigs, but whatever you have works)
• 
  
  1/4C canning salt
• 
  
  1C white vinegar
• 
  
  2 qts. water

Heat the water, vinegar, and salt until the salt is dissolved. Let the liquid cool. 

In the meantime wash all the ingredients.

Peel and quarter the onions.

Place the onions, grape leaf (well washed), garlic cloves, and a handful of dill sprigs on the bottom of the jar.

Then wash and quarter your cucumbers, and pack them straight up and down in the jar.

Whatever doesn't fit, I eat!!!

On top of the pickles add more sprigs of dill and the piece of rye bread.

Then pour the now cooled liquid over the pickles. Go slowly.

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Put the lid on and set the pickles aside, out of direct sunlight, for 2 days and then refrigerate.

At that time I remove the rye bread.

Then eat, they are best at 1 week, but who can wait that long?! They won't keep forever, but these don't last long around here.