I choose dill - there’s just something about a crunchy, garlicky, dill pickle that I can’t resist. And since I had a bunch of fresh cucumbers from the garden, I decided to make them.

First came the pickles - I searched online for the best dill pickle recipe, found several and picked the one that had the highest ratings. The recipes were all pretty similar - cucumbers, garlic, dill seeds, apple cider vinegar and pickling salt. I set to work and ended up canning 4 quart jars of dill pickles - 3 went on the shelf and 1 into the fridge.

About a week later, we grilled burgers and cracked open that jar of pickles. Well . . . not only were they incredibly sour, but they were super mushy. Definitely not what you want in a dill pickle! Come to find out there’s something called pickle crisp granules - while optional, these granules are supposed to help keep your pickles crisp - both Ball and Mrs. Wages have pickle crisp products. Sigh. You can find them here and here on Amazon.

But it was too late for me to use any pickle crisp granules and the pickles were too sour to eat anyway. So there was only one thing to do - convert all my dill pickles to pickle relish! You can find the recipe I used here.

Now I mostly followed this recipe - except for the 4 cups of chopped and seeded cucumbers. Remember - I had 4 jars of dill pickles. So I emptied those jars, threw out the super mushy parts, chopped the remaining pickles and let them drain in a separate colander. (I didn’t salt them or let them sit in water). While I simmered all the other vegetables in the recipe, I didn’t simmer the pickles - I just added them to the pot before packing the relish into the jars. Best dill pickle relish ever! LOL