Bread and Butter Zucchini Pickles

Zucchini pickles are a sweet and tangy way to put up a summer squash glut, turning a counter full of overgrown zucchini into crisp, bread-and-butter-style pickles you can enjoy long after the garden has wound down. They come together as quick refrigerator pickles or as a water bath canning recipe for the pantry shelf, so you can make as few or as many as your harvest demands.

If you’ve ever grown zucchini, you know the late summer feeling of watching the pile grow faster than you can cook it, and these pickles give that surplus somewhere worthwhile to go.

This recipe is adapted from the USDA Complete Guide to Home Canning, where it appears as Pickled Bread-and-Butter Zucchini, and it follows the classic bread and butter pickle method with the same sweet and sour brine of vinegar, sugar, mustard seed, celery seed, and turmeric that you’d use for Classic Bread and Butter Pickles made with cucumbers. Zucchini takes to that brine readily, and its mild flavor when raw soaks up the spices nicely.

The step that makes the difference here is a two hour soak in salt water before the zucchini ever meets the brine, which draws out moisture and keeps the slices crisp through canning. Zucchini holds its texture surprisingly well once pickled, often better than cucumbers do, which is part of why this one has stayed in the rotation alongside the rest of our pickling recipes.

If you’re new to canning, it’s worth reading through water bath canning for beginners before you start, and you’ll find plenty more to fill the canner in our collection of water bath canning recipes. Of course, you can always make this recipe as a quick fridge pickle and skip the canner entirely.

Choosing Zucchini for Pickling

Small, young zucchini make the crispest pickles. Look for squash that’s firm all the way along with tight, glossy skin and no soft spots, and try to pick ones that are close to the same diameter so the slices pickle at the same rate. Squash in the 1 to 1 1/2 inch range across works nicely, since the rounds are small enough to pack neatly into a jar and stack without much wasted space.

The oversized baseball bat zucchini that hides under the leaves until it’s the size of your forearm is the wrong squash for this job. Once zucchini gets large the flesh turns spongy and watery, the seeds get tough, and the skin can run bitter, and none of that improves in a jar of brine. Save the giants for zucchini relish, where they get shredded anyway, and use the small tender ones here. Zucchini pickles well within a day or two of picking, so plan to slice it while it’s still garden fresh.

Ingredients for Zucchini Pickles

This is a short, classic ingredient list, with a sweet and tangy brine and the familiar bread and butter pickle spices doing most of the flavoring. Everything here comes from the tested USDA recipe, so the vegetables, vinegar, and salt stay as written even though the spices have some room to move.

• Zucchini: the star of the recipe. Choose small, young squash, sliced into 1/8 to 1/4 inch rounds. Larger, mature zucchini is spongy and won’t crisp up, and it can run a little bitter. Try to pick zucchini that’s a similar size so the slices pickle evenly.
• Onions: I like a white onion here for crunch and a little heat that mellows once it’s pickled. Slice the onion a touch thinner than the zucchini so it comes through as an accent rather than taking over. Keep the onion at the amount called for rather than adding extra, since it’s a low-acid vegetable and the tested recipe is balanced around that quantity.
• Canning or pickling salt: used for the pre-soak that draws moisture out of the zucchini and keeps it crisp. Use pickling or canning salt rather than iodized or table salt, since the iodine and anti-caking additives cloud the brine and can give off flavors over time.
• White vinegar (5%): provides the acidity that makes these pickles safe for water bath canning, along with a clean, sharp tang. Apple cider vinegar at 5% acidity also works and gives a warmer flavor.
• Sugar: balances the vinegar into the sweet and sour flavor that makes a bread and butter pickle.
• Mustard seed: a classic bread and butter spice that adds gentle warmth.
• Celery seed: brings that familiar deli pickle background note.
• Ground turmeric: adds a warm, earthy note and is responsible for the pickle’s sunny yellow color (a little goes a long way, and it will stain, so work carefully).

The dry spices are the flexible part of this list. Mustard seed, celery seed, and turmeric can be adjusted to taste, or swapped for other dry pickling spices, without changing how safe the pickles are. What can’t move is the ratio of vegetables to vinegar, so measure the zucchini and onion rather than eyeballing them.

If you’d like extra firm slices, you can add calcium chloride (Pickle Crisp) to the jars, at 1/8 teaspoon per pint. It’s optional, and the salt soak on its own does a good job of keeping these crunchy.

How to Make Zucchini Pickles

You’ll salt and soak the vegetables to draw out moisture, make a quick spiced brine, simmer everything briefly, then pack hot jars and process in a boiling water canner.

The one part that takes any real time is the soak, and that’s hands off. I usually slice everything in the morning, leave the bowl on the counter, and come back after lunch to finish the batch, which spreads the work out and keeps the kitchen from being tied up all afternoon.

Slicing and Salting the Vegetables

Slice the zucchini into 1/8 to 1/4 inch rounds and the onions a little thinner, then combine them in a large bowl. You’re aiming for 16 cups of sliced zucchini, so measure as you go rather than counting squash, since zucchini varies so much in size that a count won’t tell you anything useful. A mandoline makes quick work of this and keeps the rounds even, which matters more than it sounds like it should, because uneven slices pickle unevenly.

Sprinkle the vegetables with the canning salt, cover with about an inch of water, and give everything a swish. Let the bowl stand for 2 hours, then drain thoroughly. This step is what keeps the zucchini crisp and softens the bite of the raw onion, so it’s worth the wait. Don’t rinse the slices after draining, just let them drain well.

Making the Brine

In a large pot, combine the vinegar, sugar, mustard seed, celery seed, and turmeric. Bring it to a boil, stirring so the sugar dissolves fully and the spices distribute through the brine.

Use a stainless steel or enameled pot rather than aluminum or bare copper, since the vinegar reacts with those metals and can pick up a metallic taste or an odd color. The brine looks alarmingly thin at this stage, and that’s fine, because the vegetables release liquid as they simmer and there ends up being plenty to cover the jars.

Simmering the Vegetables

Add the drained zucchini and onion to the boiling brine, being careful not to splash (both for safety and to keep the turmeric off your counters and clothes). Lower the heat and simmer for 5 minutes. At this point the pickles are ready to be canned or packed into jars for the fridge.

Five minutes is the whole simmer, so set a timer and stop there. The slices should still have some resistance when you fish one out, since they’ll keep cooking during processing and again in the residual heat of the sealed jar. Anything that’s gone limp in the pot will be soft on the shelf.

Filling the Jars

Working quickly, pack the hot vegetables into hot jars and cover with the hot brine, leaving 1/2 inch headspace. Run a bubble remover or plastic utensil around the inside of each jar to release trapped air, then add a little more brine if needed to keep the headspace right. Wipe the rims, apply the lids, and screw on the bands until fingertip tight.

Zucchini rounds trap air between the slices more than you’d expect, so take your time with the bubbling step and check the headspace again afterward. If you’re adding Pickle Crisp, it goes into each jar before the brine, not into the pot.

Canning Zucchini Pickles

These can be made as quick refrigerator pickles or water bath canned for the pantry. For fridge pickles, pack the hot vegetables and brine into clean jars, let them cool, and store them in the refrigerator, where they’ll keep for a few weeks. They soften a little as they sit, but they stay good for snacking.

To can them, prepare a water bath canner while the brine comes up to a boil, and keep your jars hot until you’re ready to fill. Once the jars are packed with hot vegetables and topped with hot brine, place the lids on and process for 10 minutes, adjusting for altitude (see below). The processing time is the same whether you’re filling pints or quarts.

When the timer goes off, turn off the heat and let the jars sit in the hot water for another 5 minutes before removing them, which helps prevent siphoning or liquid loss as the jars come out of the canner. Lift the jars onto a towel-lined surface, leaving space between them, and let them cool undisturbed for 12 to 24 hours.

Check each lid once the jars are at room temperature. A sealed lid is flat or slightly concave and doesn’t flex when pressed. Remove the bands for storage, and refrigerate any jars that didn’t seal, eating those within a couple of weeks. For fuller flavor, give canned jars a few days to rest before opening so the brine and spices settle into the slices.

Tips for Crisp Zucchini Pickles

Crispness starts at the cutting board rather than in the canner. Small young squash, sliced thin and evenly, holds its texture in a way that big watery zucchini simply won’t, no matter what you add to the jar. The two hour salt soak is the other half of it, since drawing moisture out of the slices before they hit the brine is what keeps them from collapsing during processing.

Beyond that, a few small things help. Some extension versions of this recipe use ice water for the soak instead of plain cold water, which keeps the slices firmer while they sit. Adding Pickle Crisp at 1/8 teaspoon per pint gives a bit of extra insurance. Keep the simmer to the full 5 minutes and no longer, process for the time your elevation calls for rather than rounding up, and pull the jars out of the canner promptly after the 5 minute rest so they aren’t sitting in hot water any longer than they need to be.

Storage and Shelf Life

Sealed, processed jars keep for 12 to 18 months in a cool, dark, dry spot. Take the bands off before the jars go on the shelf so a seal that lets go later shows itself instead of being held shut by the ring. The pickles stay safe past that window as long as the seal holds, but the color fades, and the slices gradually soften, so I try to work through a year’s batch before the next zucchini season starts.

Once a jar is open it lives in the refrigerator, where it’ll keep for a couple of months with the slices staying under the brine. Uncanned refrigerator pickles keep a few weeks. A little settling of the spices at the bottom of the jar is normal and isn’t a spoilage sign.

Serving Ideas

We eat these anywhere we’d usually reach for cucumber pickles, but they’re especially good tucked into sandwiches with cured meat and a sharp cheese. They also hold their own on a charcuterie board alongside pickled eggs and a spoonful of crabapple jelly.

Chopped fine, they add crunch and tang to tuna salad, egg salad, or potato salad, and they make a sharp, tangy bite next to burgers or anything rich off the grill. My own preference, though, is eating them straight from the jar with a fork while I’m putting groceries away.

Zucchini Pickle FAQs

If the zucchini keeps coming, here are the rest of our canning recipes for putting up summer squash.

Zucchini Canning Recipes

Canning Zucchini in Pineapple Juice

Zucchini Relish Recipe for Canning

13+ Zucchini Canning Recipes

Once you’ve got the water bath out, there’s a whole shelf of vegetables worth pickling the same way.

Vegetable Pickling Recipes

Pickled Dilly Beans (Dill Pickled Green Beans)

Pickled Banana Peppers

Canning Sauerkraut