Best-Ever Bread-and Butters

The ice cubes help keep the thin cucumber slices from breaking

4 quarts. sliced cucumbers (40-50)
1/2 cups salt
2 quarts sliced onions
Ice cubes.
Gently stir salt into thinly sliced cucumbers. Cover with ice cubes; let stand 2 or 3 hours or until cucumbers are crisp and cold. Add more ice if it melts; drain. Add onions.

1 quart vinegar
4 cups sugar
1 tablespoon celery seeds
2 tablespoons mustard seeds
1 tablespoon ginger
t teaspoon turmeric (optional)
1/2 teaspoon white pepper (optional)

Combine the above - vinegar through the white pepper - in large kettle, and bring quickly to a boil, and boil 10 minutes.
Add cucumber and onion slices and bring to boiling point. I cook them until all the slices look translucent. I am usually making at least 2 batches at once so they don't cook evenly without a bit of help.) Pack at once in hot jars. ( I sterilize mine in the oven at 250 for at least 10 minutes, and turn the oven off) The recipe says to prosses in boiling water bath for 30 minutes. I don't do that. But otherwise, I follow this recipe to a T. Sometimes I have left out the turmeric or the pepper, but I didn't like them as well, and am back to the original recipe once more. The recipe says it makes 8 pints. I'm not sure of that. I only know I make them most every year because I LOVE to put them into potato salad. To me, itmakes potato salad. Otherwise, I don't even like to eat them, because to me, the only good pickles to eat are dill pickles, and the only ones of them I like are Milwaukee Dills from the grocery store. If you ever find a really crisp dill pickle recipe, send it to me, because I don't like "flabby" dills, and I am tired of trying recipes and not liking them.

Sometimes, if I have a bit more cucumbers than the recipe calls for, I make a double recipe of the cooked vinegar/sugar mixture with all the spices. I have thought at times that there was not enough "juice" for the pickles. Maybe though, it is just because I don't give them the boiling water bath that I try to be sure that juice covers the pickles.