Generally pickling cucumbers of a size for this recipe are 3-5" long. I don't know if that helps or not.

It's not at all uncommon to end up making more syrup or you can just refrigerate and consume any leftover cucumbers. Believe me, they'll go fast, with syrup or without.

Carol

Thanks Carol!

LOL I was hoping for an actual measurement as I have tons of cukes that are larger than they should be. Our neighbor's son went a little overboard on planting and they aren't picking many so I went out and filled our lawnmower trailer. I'm making several batches of Red-Hot Pickles with the big yellowing ones and using some of the smaller ones to do the chunk pickles. Probably makes some cucumber ketchup and other things tomorrow too. Oy, too many cukes!

Glad to help. Over 5 inches are generally good for relish. There's also Senfgurken which is an old recipe using the big yellow cucumbers.

Carol

For a double batch Linda Lou's recipe, I used an 8 quart basket of pickles 3 to 4 inches long. When ready to process, I had 1 pint without syrup. Just put them in the fridge and they were gone in a week. If you are making a single batch, you could make 1-1/2 batches of syrup to be safe.

Thanks again. I decided to take all the smaller ones and got them started last night. If I need more syrup to cover them I'll just make more. I'm also doing cinnamon pickles with the biggies but I'll look up Senfgurken too. We don't eat much relish and I have tons left in the cabinet so I doubt I'll make much of it. Would the big ones work for ketchup?

Carol
My Mom and Grandmother used the fats, as we called them and made what they called Slippery Jim's. The cukes were peeled and cut into strips. We were vegetable farmers at the time, so we had many of the big ones. I make fours kinds of pickles now and Slippery Jim's is not one of them because I don't let my garden pickles get too big.

Hi Shirley. Do you mind sharing the recipe for Slippery Jims? I did a search and came up blank. Thanks!

My sisters and I are sharing my Mom's old hand written canning book. I'll find out which sister has it and get the recipe for you. Oh, how we loved our Mom's home made pickles.

Thanks Shirley! I love finding old cooking/baking/canning books that are hand written or have lots of notes. I did some more searching and found one place that mentioned Slim Jim pickles and gave a recipe. In parenthesis they had Senf Gurken so maybe Slim Jims are the American name for Senfgurkens? The recipes were similar except the Senfgurken recipes I've found call for brown sugar.

Both set of Grandparent came from Germany in the early 1900's The recipe may be the same. I'm working in it.