Pickle passion is blowing in the wind.

Last weekend in a bar, an acquaintance was raving about his grandma’s recipe. Said he’s run into old girlfriends unseen for 10 years who still get starry-eyed at the memory of his granny’s otherworldly pickles. Told me he’d try to dig the recipe up for me. Another friend I ran into at a restaurant excitedly promised to deliver me a jar of his mother’s pickles done in the Lebanese-Jewish tradition. Tell someone you’re making pickles and out come impassioned tales of family tradition and legendary secret recipes.

The smell of hot brine has permeated my own apartment (and possibly my neighbours’) once or twice a week for the past month. Bought a copy of the Joy of Pickling by Linda Ziedrich and have been going to town.

Mainly I’ve been sticking with the basics, experimenting with the ol’ dill pickle. There’ve been mountains of pickling cucumbers at the market all summer and we’re coming into the home stretch of the season. As for ratios of water to vinegar, I’ve tested one-to-one, two-to-one and four-to-one and the winners have been 1-1 and 2-1, as 4-1 is just not sour enough for my liking.

I’ve also been using the low-temperature-pasteurization method, where you process the jars at a simmer (180-185 F or 82-85 C ) for 30 minutes, in place of boiling them for 10-15 minutes, which is meant to preserve the cukes’ crunch. I bought a cheap candy/deep-frying thermometer to monitor that the temp is locked in the simmer zone. So far, so good. Cracked a jar the other night that was processed this way and the crunch was definitely intact. Another way to keep things crispy: soak the cucumbers in ice water for at least two hours before you begin.

I made some sliced zucchini pickles too, inspired by two recipes in the Joy of Pickling. I basically melded Ziedrich’s “bread-and-butters my way” with her bread-and-butter zucchini pickles, with less  sugar.

So here, then, are two pickle-tastic recipes – one cuke, one zuke – for all you sour-heads out there. You know who you are.

Spiced garlic dill pickles

5 lbs (2 1/4 kg) pickling cucumbers, ends cut

4.5 cups white vinegar

4.5 cups water

1/3 cup pickling salt

8 cloves garlic, peeled and halved (more or less, depending on number of jars, use two halves per jar)

1 fistful of dill sprigs per jar (or 1 tsp dill seeds, total)

1 tsp each: celery seeds, coriander seeds, black peppercorns, mustard seeds

First, crisp up your cukes by placing them in a bowl with a bunch of ice cubes and cover them with water (after you’ve scrubbed them clean and trimmed their ends). Let them soak for at least two hours, a few more is fine. When you’re ready, bring the brine (vinegar, water, salt and spices) to a boil, then simmer for five minutes.

Halve garlic cloves, separate dill into bunches (one per jar). Drain the cukes. Put a little dill, half a garlic clove and some tightly-packed cukes into sterilized jars (I boil mine in the canner), then a little more dill and another half clove of garlic. Pour the brine over top, leaving about 1/2 inch (just over 1 cm) of headspace. Process jars in a water bath for 30 minutes, making sure the temp stays between 180 F/82 C and 185 F/85 C.

And for the zukes (note: this is for a small batch, you can easily double it):

Sliced zucchini pickles

2 lbs (just under 1 kg) zucchini, cut into 1/2 cm discs

1 medium onion, sliced

1/4 cup pickling salt

1/2 cup sugar

1 cup distilled vinegar

1 cup cider vinegar

1/2 tsp each: mustard seeds, celery seeds, fennel seeds, black peppercorns, turmeric

Mix together the sliced zucchini and onion in a large bowl and add the salt, stirring to cover the vegetables. Cover and allow to sweat it out for an hour or two, stirring every so often. Drain and rinse thoroughly.

Bring vinegar, water and sugar to a boil, then reduce to a simmer. Stir in the spices and the vegetables and continue to simmer for 3-5 minutes. Pack the lot into hot, clean jars, distributing brine evenly and leaving 1/2 inch (just over 1 cm) headspace. Because crunch preservation is not applicable here, go ahead and process the jars by boiling them for 10 minutes.