25 Summer Pickle Recipes to Make Before Labor Day
We have been putting cucumbers in brine at the corner of Cucumber and Vine since 1926, which means this summer marks one hundred years of watching what folks do with a jar once they carry it home. Turns out you have been busy.
What follows is the biggest pile of summer pickle recipes we have ever put in one place. The first ten are the ones our readers actually opened most this season, straight from our own numbers. The other fifteen are the cookout food we could not stand to leave off.
Fair warning before you scroll. One of these is a cupcake.
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The 10 most-clicked pickle dishes of the season
No staff vote, no guessing. These are the recipes you opened most this summer.
Think jalapeño poppers, except the pickle is the point. Halved Mt. Olive Kosher Baby Dills get stuffed with cream cheese, cheddar, and chopped Jalapeno Slices, wrapped in bacon, brushed with barbecue sauce, and baked about 25 minutes until the bacon goes crisp. Smoky, briny, with a slow little heat trailing behind. Make the poppers
Be honest. You have tasted pickle juice straight from the jar. This freezes that feeling onto a stick. Stir a little sugar into Mt. Olive Pickle Juicers, pour into molds, freeze overnight. Hand one to a kid on a ninety-degree afternoon and watch the face they make. Get the pickle pops
Crispy outside, cool and tangy in the middle. Cream cheese, sharp cheddar, ranch seasoning, and diced Mt. Olive Kosher Baby Dills roll into balls, freeze 30 minutes so they hold their shape, then go into panko and hot oil. This is the plate that empties before the burgers come off the grill. See how they are made
Tart on tart, and somehow it works. A pitcher of lemonade spiked with Mt. Olive Pickle Juicers and a jar of Kosher Dill Spears, lemon slices and fresh dill floating on top. At a Fourth of July cookout, this is the dispenser that runs dry first. Pour the lemonade
What keeps a club from going soggy on a hot day is a full layer of Mt. Olive Kosher Dill Sandwich Stuffers, cut flat and long so the crunch reaches every corner of the bread. Toast, stack turkey and bacon and tomato, let the pickles do the sharpening. Eleven minutes, start to finish. Build the sandwich
Pull these from the oven and the garlic butter does your inviting for you. Ham, pulled pork, and Swiss on Hawaiian rolls, with Mt. Olive Kosher Dill Chips tucked in to cut the richness. Fifteen minutes covered, five more uncovered, then set the pan down and let people wreck it. Get the slider recipe
Do not pour that last inch of brine down the drain. Whisk Mt. Olive Pickle Juicers with olive oil, Dijon, and oregano and you have a vinaigrette that wakes up a bowl of spinach or doubles as a chicken marinade. Five ingredients, five minutes, no stove. Whisk it up
Kids down, porch finally cooling off. This is the pour. Shake vodka and vermouth with Mt. Olive Pickle Juicers, strain it cold, rim the glass with Sweet Baby Gherkins. Bracing, and not for the faint of heart. Mix the martini
This one rewards patience. Marinate chicken overnight in olive oil, red wine vinegar, and brine from a jar of Mt. Olive Italian Seasoned Mild Banana Pepper Rings, then bake it under those same peppers and a blanket of melted mozzarella. Tangy, and mild enough that the kids clean their plates. Start the marinade
Told you. Juice from Mt. Olive Bread & Butter Chips goes straight into the batter, then cream cheese frosting, a chip, and a sprig of dill on top. Carry a dozen to a party and stand back while the table argues. The loudest skeptic always comes back for a second. Bake the cupcakes
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Pickle recipes for the grill
Charcoal is lit. Here is what to put over it.
Cut the dogs into thick pieces and thread them onto skewers alternating with Mt. Olive Kosher Dill Spears, then grill five minutes a side until you have real grill marks. The pickle chars a little at the edges and turns sweeter than you expect. Kids will eat these standing up. Fire up the skewers
Sometimes the whole recipe is one good decision. Grill the dog, toast the bun over direct heat for a minute, and lay a Mt. Olive Kosher Dill Spear right in the bun alongside it. One rule from us: liquid condiments go on before the solid ones. Mustard first, pickles after. See the SpearDog
Everything you love about a cheeseburger, threaded onto a stick and cooked in twenty minutes. Mt. Olive Bread & Butter Pickle Spears go on the skewer with the beef, so the sweet-tang lands in the same bite as the char instead of getting lost under a bun. Skewer them up
Around here, pork and vinegar is not a trend. It is just how it is done. Mt. Olive pickles bring the tang that keeps a rich, slow-cooked shoulder from getting heavy, and the leftovers turn into sandwiches and tacos all week. Cook it Saturday, eat it through Wednesday. Get the pulled pork
Here is the trick nobody tells you: pickle brine is already a brine. Salt, vinegar, garlic, dill, all of it. Chicken thighs go into Mt. Olive Pickle Juicers, then buttermilk, then seasoned flour, then oil at 345 degrees for six to eight minutes. Finish with hot honey and more pickle. Recipe from Krista at DeSocio In The Kitchen. Brine the chicken
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Cool sides and salads for the cookout table
The stuff that sits in the fridge all afternoon and gets better while it waits.
Potatoes and eggs bring the body but almost none of the flavor, which is why so much potato salad tastes like nothing at all. Chopped Mt. Olive Hamburger Dill Chips fix that in a single move, standing in for sweet relish and cutting straight through the mayo. Make it the night before. Day two is better, and that is not a figure of speech. Get the potato salad
An Italian sub with the bread taken away and the good parts left behind. Salami, mozzarella, cherry tomatoes, croutons, and Mt. Olive pickled peppers in one big bowl. Nothing gets cooked, nothing gets soggy, and it feeds five without you turning on the oven in July. Toss the salad
Hollow out whole Mt. Olive Kosher Dills, fold Squeeze Dill Relish into the tuna, and spoon it back into the pickle. The pickle is the bread. No carbs, no cooking, and ten of them come out of one afternoon. Fill the boats
All the cheeseburger, none of the bun, and a burger sauce that leans on Mt. Olive pickles to do the work that ketchup usually fumbles. This is the one for the week after the long weekend, when the cooler is empty and the appetite is not. Build the salad
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Party snacks and dips worth opening a jar for
The fried pickle has a birthday. In 1963, at the Duchess Drive-In in Atkins, Arkansas, sitting right across the road from a pickle plant, owner Bernell “Fatman” Austin dropped hamburger dill chips into catfish batter. Ours keeps that spirit and adds banana pepper rings to the basket. A minute or two a side, then ranch. Heat the skillet
If you want the pure version, this is it. Mt. Olive Pickle Chips get patted dry, dredged in seasoned flour, dipped in buttermilk, pressed into panko, and fried two to four minutes until golden. Pat them dry. That is the whole secret, and it is the step everybody skips. Get the fried pickles
Every bit of the fried pickle, none of the oil splatter on your stovetop. A creamy Bread & Butter base goes under a lid of golden, crispy breadcrumbs and fresh dill, then chills 30 minutes before it hits the table. Kettle chips alongside. It will come back scraped clean. Make the dip
Pimento cheese is the pâté of the South and we will not be taking questions. Extra-sharp cheddar, cream cheese, Duke's mayonnaise, and Mt. Olive Roasted Red Peppers, with cayenne for the back of the throat. Spread it on toast, add bacon, top with pickles. Stir it together
A charcuterie board is a beautiful thing right up until fifteen people crowd around it in the heat. Jarcuterie fixes that. Individual jars packed with Mt. Olive pickles, cheese, cured meat, pretzels, and tomatoes, one per guest, no elbows and no cooking. Build them in the morning, pull them from the fridge when the doorbell goes. Pack the jars
A cheeseball rolled in pepperoni and cheese until it looks like a football, ringed with Mt. Olive pickles, crackers, and chips. It is a little ridiculous. That is the entire point, and it is the first thing photographed at every party it shows up to. Roll the cheeseball
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More summer pickle recipes to try this season
Never cooked with brine before? Start easy. The pickle juice salad dressing takes five minutes and the Pickle Pops take two ingredients. From there you are ready for a tray of BBQ Pickle Poppers at the next cookout. When you have worked through the summer pickle recipes on this list, there are hundreds more waiting in our full recipe collection.
Every April, our hometown of Mount Olive, North Carolina throws the NC Pickle Festival, and somewhere between fifty and sixty thousand people turn up in a town of about four thousand. So we know we are not the only ones who feel this way about a jar.
Cook a few of these. Then send us the one you came up with yourself. A hundred years in, our fans still manage to surprise us.