Overnight Refrigerator Bread and Butter Pickles

By Sarah On August 13, 2018 | Updated: August 25, 2022

These refrigerator bread and butter pickles are made entirely in the fridge overnight and perfectly crisp, sweet, and tangy. – perfect for using up a bounty of cucumbers!

This recipe is brought to you courtesy of my mother’s numerous-and-simultaneously-exploding cucumber plants.

Right now it’s literally us vs. cukes in a battle to use them all.

The cucumbers were winning for a bit there but then these bread and butter pickles happened and we pulled ahead.

Now it’s just a race to eat all the pickles as fast as humanly possible.

These are just so so GOOD, you guys. Bread and butter pickle lovers listen up, cause you’re gonna want in on this pickle magic.

These Refrigerator Bread and Butter Pickles feature…

A perfectly crisp texture
Sweet and tangy bread + butter pickle flavor
Only 7 ingredients to make
No canning involved – your fridge does the work!

Making the Bread and Butter Pickles

(scroll down to the bottom of the post for the full recipe)

Ingredients You’ll Need

Cucumbers
Sweet onion
Kosher salt
Sugar
Apple cider vinegar
Mustard seeds

Choosing Your Cucumbers

Both seed-in and seedless cucumbers will work great for this recipe. If you can, try to find medium-sized cucumbers so you get uniform, one-bite sized pickles.

We typically use six medium cucumbers in this recipe. Anywhere from 8-10 cups of sliced cucumbers will work perfectly.

When slicing your cucumbers, try to slice them as thin as possible. Thinner cucumbers = crispier pickle. You can use a sharp knife or mandoline for this step.

Tips for Perfect Refrigerator Pickles

Soak cucumbers + onion in salt – we’re going to soak the cucumbers and onion slices in 3 tablespoons kosher salt for about 1 hour. This salt soak will draw the water out of the cucumbers, as well as flavor them. Once they’ve soaked for an hour, rinse cucumbers well with cold water.
Make brine and cool – the pickle brine consists of apple cider vinegar, granulated sugar, brown sugar, and mustard seeds. The brine gets cooked on the stove just until the sugar dissolves. Cool the brine at least 30 minutes before proceeding with the last step.
Divide cucumbers between jars – you can brine the cucumbers in one half gallon jar or several pint jars. Pour the brine over top, screw lids on jars, and transfer to refrigerator.
Refrigerate pickles 12 hours – don’t skimp on the chill time! These pickles need at least 12 hours to develop that signature bread and butter flavor.

How to Store Pickles

We recommend storing these pickles in mason jars for easy storing and serving. Pickles will keep well in refrigerator up to 1 month. Make sure you keep them in their brine so they maintain their flavor.

Can I Can Pickles?

This is one of the most common questions we get with this recipe. The short answer is, I have not tried it myself, but I have heard from several readers who have had success canning these pickles.

If you would like to try canning this recipe, I would strongly recommend reading this canning guide first and learn how to can safely.

These pickles though, y’all. They’re sweet, tangy, crispy, and 100000% the type of pickle you just eat straight outta the jar. Trust me, you’ll be glad this makes a huge batch!

We love giving these pickles away for gifts in the summer, but we always make sure we have at least one jar on hand in the fridge.

Priorities, y’all, the pickle addiction is REAL.

Watch these pickles made step-by-step on Google Web Stories!

Need some grilling inspiration to go with your pickles? Try these out!

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