Sweet Dill Pickles

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Sweet dill pickles split the difference between a tangy, garlicky dill and a sweet golden bread and butter pickle, landing on a chip that reads as sweet and sour with a clear note of dill running through it. They’re the kind of pickle that vanishes off a relish tray and turns an ordinary ham sandwich into something you actually look forward to.

Notes from My Kitchen
Quick Look at the Recipe
Choosing Cucumbers
Ingredients for Sweet Dill Pickles
Brine Strength and Substitutions
How to Make Sweet Dill Pickles
Canning Sweet Dill Pickles
Altitude Adjustments
Tips for Crisp Pickles
Ways to Use Sweet Dill Pickles
Yield Notes
Sweet Dill Pickle FAQs
Cucumber Pickling
Sweet Dill Pickles Recipe
Pickling

This recipe has been reviewed for safety and accuracy by a Master Food Preserver certified through the University of Cornell Cooperative Extension.

If you’ve only ever known dill pickles and bread and butter pickles as two separate things, sweet dill pickles are what happens when you let them meet in the middle. They carry the dill and garlic you’d expect from a jar of dill pickles, but they sit in a sweetened, golden brine that’s closer to bread and butter pickles, so each chip comes across as sweet first and dill second.

The recipe here builds on a delicious sweet-hot pickle from the book Canning Cents by Stephanie Peterson, with the heat removed but all the sweet dill flavor left intact.

The brine is sweetened cider vinegar with nothing added to dilute it, so the acidity stays high enough to make these shelf-stable in a water bath.

If you’d rather lean savory and skip the sugar, the garlic dill pickles cover that end, and the sweet cucumber pickles go sweeter still.

Notes from My Kitchen

Sweet dills tend to be the jar that empties first around here, since the sweetness wins over the people who claim they don’t care for pickles. I slice these into thin chips so they pile easily onto a sandwich or a burger, and the turmeric gives the brine a soft golden color that brightens up a relish tray next to the plain dills.

If you’re newer to canning, these are forgiving as long as you keep the brine at full strength and don’t water it down to soften the tang. They keep getting better for a few weeks in the jar as the dill and the sweet brine settle into the cucumbers, so try to give them a little time before you open that first one.

Quick Look at the Recipe

Recipe Name: Sweet Dill Pickles
Recipe Type: Pickles
Canning Method: Water Bath Canning
Prep Time: About 30 minutes, plus a 3 hour salt soak
Cook Time: About 10 minutes for the brine
Canning Time: 10 minutes for pints, 15 minutes for quarts
Yield: About 4 pints
Jar Sizes: Pints or quarts
Headspace: 1/2 inch
Ingredients Overview: Pickling cucumbers, cider vinegar, sugar, pickling salt, garlic, dill, mustard seed, and turmeric
Safe Canning Recipe Source: Follows standard cucumber pickle guidance from the NCHFP
Difficulty: Easy
Similar Recipes: These come together like other fresh-pack cucumber pickles, including Dill Pickle Slices and Dill Pickle Spears, and they share their sweet golden brine with Bread and Butter Pickles. For more options, browse the full set of cucumber pickle recipes.

Choosing Cucumbers

Reach for pickling cucumbers, the Kirby type, in the 3 to 4 inch range. They have thinner skins, fewer seeds, and less water than slicing cucumbers, and that lower water content is what holds the crunch through a hot water bath. A long, slender slicing cucumber from the grocery store will soften no matter what you do, so it’s worth seeking out the bumpy little pickling ones at a farm stand or growing a few yourself.

Freshness matters as much as variety. Use the cucumbers within a day of picking if you can, since they start to soften from the moment they leave the vine. Before you slice, trim a slice off the blossom end of each cucumber and discard it, because enzymes concentrated there will soften your pickles over time. These get sliced into thin chips, so a mandoline gives you even rounds that pack neatly and pickle at the same rate.

Ingredients for Sweet Dill Pickles

This is a short ingredient list, and most of it is pantry staples you likely already have on hand for canning season. The cucumbers and the sweet brine do the heavy lifting, while the garlic, dill, and mustard seed that go into each jar shape the flavor.

Pickling Cucumbers: Firm, fresh Kirby type cucumbers, 3 to 4 inches, sliced into thin chips with the blossom end trimmed off and discarded.
Cider Vinegar: Apple cider vinegar at 5 percent acidity. It carries the sweet-sour tang and it is the safety control here, so use the full amount and do not dilute it. White vinegar works too and gives a lighter, sharper bite, though cider rounds out the sweetness a little more.
Sugar: Granulated white sugar sweetens the vinegar into the brine that defines these pickles. The sugar is for flavor rather than safety, but cutting it back moves the recipe toward a plain dill and away from the sweet profile you’re after.
Pickling Salt: Use pickling or canning salt, not table salt, since iodine and anti-caking agents cloud the brine. Most of it goes into the pre-soak and gets rinsed away, so it is for crunch and flavor here, not the safety control.
Turmeric: Ground turmeric simmers right into the brine and gives these pickles their golden color along with a mild, earthy note. A half teaspoon tints the whole batch, so measure with a light hand, since more than that turns the color muddy and can stain your hands and counters. It is the same touch of turmeric that colors bread and butter pickles.
Garlic: Fresh cloves, sliced thin and dropped into each jar so the flavor spreads through the pickles as they cure. One sliced clove per pint is a good starting point, and you can add more if you like a heavier garlic note.
Dill: Dill goes right into the jars. Dill seed gives an even dill flavor throughout, or you can tuck a fresh dill head or a few fronds into each jar instead for a more classic dill-pickle look. Any of the three work.
Mustard Seed: Whole mustard seed in each jar adds a mellow tang and a little texture against the sweet brine. It is a spice, so you can adjust it to taste without affecting safety, and a few pickling spices like peppercorns are easy to add alongside it.
Pickle Crisp (Optional): A scant 1/8 teaspoon of Pickle Crisp per pint helps the chips hold their snap. It is calcium chloride, and it does the job the old lime and alum soaks used to do, without the extra steps.

Have everything sliced, soaked, and your spices measured out before the brine goes on the heat. Since the garlic, dill, and mustard seed all go into the jars, it helps to set your warm jars in a row and add the spices to each one before you start packing, because the filling moves quickly once the cucumbers are hot.

Brine Strength and Substitutions

The brine here is sweetened vinegar with a little turmeric simmered in for color, and it has no added water. That undiluted vinegar is what keeps these pickles safe on the shelf. You can use apple cider or white vinegar as long as it is labeled 5 percent acidity, but do not cut the vinegar back or add water to thin the brine. The sugar is part of the flavor, not the safety, so it can be adjusted, though a big reduction moves these away from the sweet dill profile.

The salt in the pre-soak is rinsed off before packing, so it is there for crunch and seasoning rather than preservation. If you are watching sodium, the low salt dill pickle approach shows how to lighten the salt safely. When in doubt about any change, the National Center for Home Food Preservation is the place to check before you adjust a tested recipe.

How to Make Sweet Dill Pickles

The flow here is a salt soak, then a quick sweet brine, then a brief warm-through of the cucumbers in that brine before they go into jars that already hold the garlic, dill, and mustard seed. Heating the chips in the brine is what gives them their sweet-crispy character and draws out enough cucumber liquid to fill the jars well.

You can stop at the refrigerator stage if you only want a few jars to eat soon, or process them in a water bath for the pantry. Either way, the steps up to packing are the same.

Salt the Cucumbers

Slice 8 cups of pickling cucumbers into thin chips, trimming and discarding the blossom end as you go. Place the slices in a large bowl, sprinkle 1/4 cup pickling salt over them, and cover with water and a generous handful of ice. Let them sit at room temperature for about 3 hours, which firms up the chips and pulls out some of their water.

When the soak is done, drain the cucumbers in a colander and rinse them well under cold running water to wash off the surface salt. Give them a minute to drain while you start the brine, since you don’t want a lot of extra water carried into the pot.

Make the Sweet Brine

In a large pot, combine 2 cups sugar, 2 cups apple cider vinegar, and 1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric. Bring it to a boil, stirring until the sugar dissolves and the turmeric colors the brine a soft gold.

Add the drained cucumber slices to the hot brine and heat them just below boiling. You are warming them through, not cooking them, so keep an eye on the pot and pull it off the heat once the chips are hot and have taken on a little color from the brine.

Pack and Fill the Jars

Into each hot pint jar, add 1 sliced garlic clove, 1 1/2 teaspoons mustard seed, and 1/2 teaspoon dill seed, or a fresh dill head or a few fronds in place of the seed. Add 1/8 teaspoon Pickle Crisp if you like, then spoon in the hot cucumber slices, packing them snugly.

Ladle the hot brine over the top to a 1/2 inch headspace, keeping everything submerged. Run a non-metal tool down the inside of each jar to release trapped air, then wipe the rims clean and set the lids on fingertip tight. Working with hot jars and hot brine keeps the temperature even going into the canner, which helps the seals and the crunch.

Canning Sweet Dill Pickles

If you only want a jar or two to eat soon, you can skip the canner entirely and keep these as refrigerator pickles. Pack the jars, let them cool, and refrigerate them for a few days before digging in. They keep several weeks in the fridge, which is the route to take when you’ve only got a handful of cucumbers to use up.

To make them shelf stable, prepare your water bath canner, jars, and lids while the brine heats. Fill and seal the jars as above, leaving 1/2 inch headspace, and lower them into the canner.

Process in a boiling water bath canner for 10 minutes for pints or 15 minutes for quarts, adjusting for altitude. Let the jars rest 5 minutes, then cool them undisturbed for 12 to 24 hours, check the seals, and wait a couple of weeks before opening so the sweet dill flavor has time to settle into the chips.

Altitude Adjustments

For water bath canning, processing times increase at higher elevations:

0 to 1,000 feet: Pints 10 minutes, quarts 15 minutes
1,001 to 6,000 feet: Pints 15 minutes, quarts 20 minutes
Above 6,000 feet: Pints 20 minutes, quarts 25 minutes

Tips for Crisp Pickles

Crisp pickles start with the cucumbers themselves. Use firm pickling cucumbers picked within a day, trim the blossom end off every one, and don’t skip the salt and ice soak, since that pre-soak firms the slices before they ever hit the brine. Thin, even chips from a mandoline also help, because they pickle at the same rate and pack tightly with fewer gaps.

From there, a scant 1/8 teaspoon of Pickle Crisp per pint adds insurance for the crunch. The other half of the equation is not over-processing, so stick to the times for your jar size and altitude rather than adding a safety margin of extra minutes, which only softens the chips.

Ways to Use Sweet Dill Pickles

These earn their keep as a snack straight from the jar, but they also do real work on a plate. Layer them onto a ham or turkey sandwich where the sweetness plays against the salt, or set a bowl out on a relish tray next to sharp cheese and crackers where the sweet-sour bite wakes everything up.

Chopped fine, they fold into tuna salad, egg salad, or a potato salad the way a sweet relish would, adding little pops of dill and tang. They also belong on any spread of home-canned pickles alongside a jar of dill pickle slices, so everyone can reach for the sweet jar or the sour one.

Yield Notes

This batch makes about 4 pints, though the exact count shifts with how big your cucumbers are and how thinly you slice them. Thin chips pack down more than thick ones, so you may land at 3 to 4 pints depending on your slices and how snugly you fill the jars.

To make more at once, scale the cucumbers and the brine up together, keeping the sugar and vinegar at equal parts so the brine stays at full strength. It is better to make a second full batch than to stretch one brine over more cucumbers than it can cover.

A few more questions come up often enough that they’re worth answering before you start a batch.

Sweet Dill Pickle FAQs

How are sweet dill pickles different from bread and butter pickles?

Both sit in a sweet, turmeric-tinted brine, so they share that golden color and sweet-sour flavor. Sweet dill pickles lean on dill seed and garlic for a dill-pickle backbone, while bread and butter pickles usually add sliced onion and a heavier hand of mustard and celery seed. These land closer to a dill, just with the sweetness turned up.

Can I make these as refrigerator pickles instead of canning them?

Yes. Pack the jars, let them cool, and keep them in the refrigerator, where they will be ready in a few days and keep for several weeks. The water bath process is what makes them shelf stable for long-term pantry storage, so only the canned jars belong on the shelf.

Why did my pickles turn out soft?

Soft pickles usually trace back to cucumbers that were not fresh, a skipped blossom-end trim, or over-processing. Start with firm pickling cucumbers used within a day of picking, trim the blossom end, do the salt and ice soak, and add Pickle Crisp if you like, then stick to the processing time for your jar size.

If you’re filling a pantry shelf with pickles this season, these slot in nicely next to the other cucumber recipes.