Author: Wondering how to make crispy, rich, and delicious sweet pickles for canning? If you’ve never tried canning pickles before, you may be surprised how delicious sweet pickle spears can be in this sweet and spicy recipe!
This recipe was an instant winner for us and I bet that once you taste it, you’ll be adding this sweet pickle recipe to your personal collection too!
We love sweet pickles around here. They were a classic snack around my house growing up and we also enjoyed them in mom’s hearty homemade chicken salad!
About 10 years ago we stopped buying our sweet pickles from the store and started canning sweet pickles at home with this sweet pickle recipe that creates perfectly crisp sweet pickles!
Fortunately, our Back to Eden garden has given us about 400 pounds (no, seriously) of cucumbers in the last 4 weeks and is still going strong!
This is just one day worth of cucumbers… we get this many every day!
While most are going to the chickens at this point, I’m still canning pickles at an alarming rate!
We have dill spears, of course, hamburger dill slices, and sweet gherkins. All sitting pretty on the shelves and waiting to be devoured later in the year…
But with the number of sweet gherkins we go through in a year, I really wanted to up the number of sweet pickles we had in the pantry without having to wait for more tiny cucumbers to be produced.
In fact, it’s been kind of tricky to catch the cucumbers at the right stage, since they seem to grow from minuscule to ginormous in less than 24 hours!
So I set out to create a great sweet pickle spears recipe that could be used on bigger cucumbers to achieve that same sweet gherkin flavor and texture. Much to my surprise, I hit the jackpot on the first try!
Note: This recipe uses approved vinegar levels for canning pickles and only changes seasonings.
Sweet Pickle Recipe
Whether you have large or small cucumbers, this sweet pickle recipe is just the thing to use them up without having to undergo the 4 day process of making sweet gherkins!
In fact, from start to finish this recipe takes about 3 hours of total time, and less than 20 minutes of hands on time!
Another thing I really like about this recipe is that you get nice crisp sweet pickles regardless of how you slice them! I like spears, but my mom likes slices… and this sweet pickle recipe is perfect for either style!
In depth water bath canning instructions can be found in my Quick Start Guide to Water Bath Canning, and nothing changes for this delicious sweet pickles recipe except the ingredients ;-)
How to Make Crisp Sweet Pickles
If you’ve ever tried canning pickles before, you may have have a soggy finished product. That’s because the recipe likely didn’t call for any tannin ingredient!
Tannin helps the pickles stay nice and crisp even through the extended heating process.
In the past, people used grape leaves, but I prefer black tea. I love the flavor that it yields and it works perfectly for keeping the pickles crisp!
So, while I might see odd that my recipe calls for black tea, this keeps the pickles crisp through the canning process!
Just be sure to rip the bag open and pour the loose leaves into the jar – you don’t want any packaging, staples, or tags in with your sweet pickles!
Canning Sweet Pickle Spears
Ingredients
- 4 Quart Jars, with Rings and Lid Sets
- 4 pounds cucumbers cut in 6 inch spears, or sliced
- 4 cups sugar
- 3 3/4 cup white vinegar
- 3 Tbsp canning salt
- 4 cinnamon stick 3-4" long
- 4 tsp whole cloves
- 2 tsp fresh ginger sliced or diced
- 4 organic black tea bags (**See notes) I like to use English Breakfast
Instructions
- Cover spears with boiling water and let stand 2 hours. Drain. (***See notes)
- Combine sugar, salt, and vinegar in a saucepan and bring to a boil.
- In hot wide mouth quart jars, place 1 cinnamon stick, 1 tsp whole cloves, 1/2 tsp fresh ginger, and the contents of 1 tea bag (don't include any of the packaging!).
- Pack spears into hot jars and ladle sugar/vinegar over them, leaving 1/2 inch headspace.
- Remove bubbles and wipe the rim of the jar to ensure a good seal.
- Adjust lid and ring to finger-tightness, process in a boiling water bath for 15 minutes.
- Remove carefully from boiling water bath and place on a towel on the counter (this reduces the change of glass breakage).
- Allow to sit overnight before moving. Check seals in the morning and refrigerate anything that didn't fully seal.
Notes
PIN THIS FOR LATER
Hi! I’ve never heard of adding tea so I’m interested to try it. When you put the contents of one bag per jar, are you using the single serving size or roughly how much goes in? I’ve noticed that different brands have different amounts of grounds in them and didn’t know how much this mattered. Thanks!
Yes! Yummy, crispy goodness! Each bag holds about a teaspoon – I might do 1.5 teaspoons just to make sure (if you’re doing loose leaf).
You won’t have TOO much tea, unless you use a full family size bag or something :-)
Hope that helps!
I made this recipe last year and the sweet pickles were amazing! I was able to use up all my extra slicers. Would you also use the same recipe for the pickling cukes in a variety of sizes without slicing them?
Also, do you use the tea with dill and other types of pickles as well?
Thanks for sharing!
Hi Christina! I’m so glad you liked it, we love them too! So, we have used this with all size cucumbers, but don’t usually leave large cucumbers uncut – they get turned into spears. But if you wanted to do 3-5 inch “small” pickles, those turn out perfectly too!
As for the tea, yes we use it in all our pickles, you can see my dill pickle recipe here!
Am i missing something? i followed the recipe to a “T” and i did not have enough liquid. Had to scramble to boil up another half batch!!! Why??????
Hi Pam, this can happen if you don’t pack the jars as tightly as others do. But fortunately making more syrup is simple and the pickles will keep while it makes.
This happens to me at least once every canning season (with pickles, or apples, or something), but like I said, thankfully it’s an easy fix! I hope you enjoy the pickles!
These pickles are not in any way, shape or form crispy. Not one bit. I followed your recipe exactly. I’m super disappointed because I wasted a lot of ingredients. The flavor is okay, but without alum, nope. Just doesn’t work.
Hey Christina, man that’s a bummer! It may have been the type of tea you used. I make these every summer (like 20-40 quarts a year) and haven’t had that issue. Many others have used this recipe without issue as well, you can read through the comments to see what other people have thought.
One other person had this issue 2 years ago, and here is what I told her:
Here are my off the top of my head thoughts.
1. Did they sit in boiling water longer than 2 hours?
2. Did they sit on the counter after they were cut for very long before they were soaked?
3. What type of tea did you use, was it black tea? This point is very important.
4. Did you use canning salt or another kind?
I hope I can help you get to the bottom of things! In the mean time, you can chop the pickles up for salsa (it’s delicious on tortilla chips!) or relish instead.
Regardless, I’m so sorry that happened <3
I’ve never been a fan of bread & butter pickles until now. Its been 5 days and we couldn’t stand the wait. so we popped open a jar to have with burgers tonight. Fantastic! Sweet, sour, soft but crunchy. The black tea worked perfectly. I also did a batch using the grape leaves from my yard. I cani’ wait to compare in a couple of days. Thank you for posting your recipe. I’ll be sure to use it for years to come.
Hi Lynda! I’m so glad you loved these sweet pickles! I’d be interested to see how they compared to your grape leaves. We have a large vineyard here, but I haven’t used grape leaves in a long time because the tea makes the pickles taste so good.
So, I’d love to hear your take!