Rotini pasta, tossed with pickle juice, cubed baked ham, cheese and pickles and dressed in a mayonnaise, pickle juice and sour cream-based dressing.

Dill Pickle Pasta Salad

I'm a pickle fanatic.

It would be a rare day that I didn't eat one with a sandwich or even just as a snack. Although I love bread and butter pickles, sweet gherkins and kosher dills the most, anything pickled is fair game - pickled okra, jalapenos, squash and beets - yep, love them all!

So, when I saw a dill pickle pasta salad going around social media I thought heck yeah, I gotta try that!

A chicken salad made with cooked chicken, celery, green onion, cold processed refrigerated dill pickles (like Grillo's) and dressed with a quality mayonnaise.

Grillo's Dill Pickle Chicken Salad

I love a good chicken salad, and my standby is still the one I lean on the most. It's a good solid deli-style chicken salad and I love it.

Since entering this food blogging experience many, many years back though, I've tried a bunch of different ones, so when I saw Elizabeth Heiskell making this one on social, I got a little curious.

Now. Pickles are a thing I do love in my chicken salad, but I use relish or pickle cubes usually and most often I lean toward a sweet relish.

Sliced fresh jalapenos, lightly blanched, then stacked in a quart jar with sliced garlic and brined in an apple cider vinegar and sugar brine.

Cowboy Candy - Candied Pickled Jalapenos

I used to grow lots of vegetables, including sweet and hot peppers, but haven't grown any in quite a bit. Haven't really grown much of anything other than tomatoes, and maybe a few herbs here the past few years. Just can't take the heat enough to keep the garden in good shape. But, peppers are in abundance and pretty cheap during the summer months, so you don't have to be a gardener to grab a bunch!

This is a variation of a Bell's Best cookbook recipe from the 70s that uses both sweet and hot peppers, but primarily sweet peppers. I decided to make it using only jalapenos. It's often referred to as Cowboy Candy across the net, but it's simply a pickled jalapeno that's a little bit heavier on the sugar, and somewhere along the line of those candied Fire 'n Ice pickles, we all love so much.

A sour cream, cream cheese and Ranch based dip, filled with spicy Fire 'n Ice pickles. Serve with kettle or ridged potato chips, pretzel chips or veggie sticks, made from celery and carrots.

Fire 'n Ice Pickle Dip

The sound of football has returned to my house. Doesn't matter that it's only preseason to my husband because by now, he is totally jonesing for a game of any kind. Course, the Saints opener could certainly have been better... but it is what it is, and they won.

If you've been around the blog for very long, y'all probably already know by now how much I love pickles. I mean how many people have one of these in their fridge for no reason except they eat a pickle just about every day?

Million Dollar Sweet Pickle Relish

 

A heirloom sweet pickle relish made from cucumbers, onion and sweet red and green bell peppers.

Million Dollar Relish

A couple of years back, Mary Fonville, a reader from our Facebook page, shared her personal recipe for Million Dollar Relish, an heirloom recipe for a sweet pickle relish that she's been personally making for more than 40 years.

Refrigerator Pickled Vegetables (Giardiniera)

Refrigerator Pickled Vegetables (Giardiniera)

Giardiniera

I decided to make up a batch of pickled veggies over the Memorial Day weekend. Pickled vegetables, or Giardiniera (meaning "the garden") is probably familiar to you from the grocery store shelf, but it's a super easy pickled condiment to make at home too.

 

Strips of onion, pickled in vinegar, sugar, hot sauce and pickling spices, an excellent addition to sandwiches, burgers, beans and greens.

Pickled Onions

I had several requests for the recipe I use for the pickled onions pictured with my turnip greens, so I promised to squeeze it in here over the weekend, between all the holiday posts for turkey and dressing and all those side dish goodies we're all looking forward to here in a few days.

The British have their pickled pearl onions, often served as an appetizer at local pubs, but the South, well, we have our own version of pickled onions. You'll most often find ours served family-style at catfish houses, right alongside the all-you-can-eat fried catfish, turnip greens, coleslaw, fried okra, and cornbread.

Easy, old fashioned icebox bread and butter pickles, can either be made to store in the refrigerator, or processed in a hot water bath for pantry storage.

Icebox Bread and Butter Pickles

Most of you know that I am pretty new to the world of canning, so I have to caveat the posts I decide to be brave enough to share, to say use at your own risk, consult a professional canning source for more detailed information on the canning process, standard disclaimers, disclosures, warnings, yada yada yada.

Not a pickling recipe, but a fun way to dress up some plain dill pickles with some sweet and spicy flavor. Super easy and if you prefer them on the milder side simply eliminate the jalapeno and red pepper flakes.

Fire 'n Ice Pickles

Fire and Ice Pickles are not a true pickling recipe, so no scoffing at me okay y'all? It's just a yummy way to dress up a jar of plain ole, cheapo, boring sour dills into a pickle that has fire and ice flavor, with a combination we southerners seem to be endeared to - sweet and spicy. We have a tendency to turn a sour thing into somethin' sweet down here, don't y'all know? Yes, that can also mean personalities. It's kinda hard to frown when you get around these thick accents we have.

Deep Fried Bread 'n Butter Pickles

Bread and butter pickles, dredged in a seasoned mix of cornmeal and flour, then deep fried.

Bread 'n Butter Fried Pickles

Who knows where it started, but I'm fairly certain that it's pretty much a southern thang to deep fry pickles.

I'd venture to guess that somebody was frying up something and had some pickles nearby and a lightbulb went off with them wondering "hmmmm..... wonder what a fried pickle might taste like?" as they plopped a couple in the dredge and into the frying pan.

Now mostly you hear about dill pickles being fried, but me, I like the sweeter ones better (imagine that) and to me the bread and butter pickles are just perfect.

Watermelon rind pickles are a multi-step process. First, the trimmed rind of a watermelon is cut into slices and soaked overnight in a salt water brine, then boiled to tenderize, and later boiled in a spiced, vinegar and sugar mixture and left to stand overnight, before preparing for water bath canning.

Watermelon Rind Pickles

I don't know what it is about the taste of sweet down south. Maybe sweet things just help to take our minds off of the heat, who knows. We sure like our desserts in The Deep South, no doubt about that. People will talk all day about not wanting to cook but then their eyes will light up at the mention of some baked goods! Some Southerners even like their mayonnaise sweet, sauces sweet, cornbread sweet, and we sure like our watermelon rind pickles sweet!

Many southerners have very fond memories of sittin' on the back porch, or more likely a picnic table in the middle of the yard - the better to hose us down - parked in front of big slices of sticky, sweet watermelon, holding a knife in one hand to cut the juicy pulp off the rind, and very often a salt shaker in the other, and havin' seed spittin' contests with or at our siblings. Yes we do that, and while I know that newly bred seedless watermelon is all the rage these days, I truly still like a good ole seeded watermelon. The only down side is their size and having the place to store it in the fridge, so the smaller seedless ones have become quite popular.