Destri's Zesty Refrigerator Pickles

I've copied this recipe exactly from my friend, Destri.

Just so we're all on the same page, Destri is a mate that I chat to online - ex-Navy, and an all round Good Bloke.

I'd give you his real name, but we're all kind of private about stuffs like that :)

1 large cucumber, cleaned and sliced into half-chips. (makes 2 -12 oz jars)

baby carrots

Onion optional

Rice wine vinegar

Hot water

1 Jalapeno

1 jar of banana peppers (you want pepper-infused vinegar)

2 (or more) clean jars with sealing lids.

Dried basil (or fresh)

Hot sauce (your fave, I used Frank's redhot sauce this week)

First off you want a jar that is just jalapeno peppers and/or hot banana peppers. You can refill this over and over with the rice vinegar and make more pepper-infused vinegar. You can add some of these pickled peppers to your pickle jars, and keep refilling your pepper-vinegar jar with fresh sliced peppers.

For refrigerator pickles, you want a mixture of 3/4 vinegar to 1/4 water for your brine. I'm on a low-sodium diet, so I'm not using any salt.

Fill your jars with the sliced cucumbers and carrots (if wanted). Pour hot brine over the pickles in the jar and then seal them. Shake it a lot and put it in the fridge. They will be awesome in 3 days and last a total of 2 weeks.

Brine this week.

2 parts Pepper-infused rice vinegar

1/4 cup of Frank's red hot sauce

1 part plain rice vinegar

1 part hot water. (1/3 of the vinegar amount)

Dried basil, 1 tsp

Garlic powder 1 tbsp.

-I stirred this all together in a large cup, letting the spices rehydrate. Try the brine it should be really zesty and have a serious twang. The pickles will be about 1/2 of this twang. The cucumbers have their own water that will mix with this. I added a few of the pickled Jalapeño slices to the jar.

These pickles seem to get better the spicier they are. You can reuse the brine I'd say 1 more time within the 2 week period. After that, start fresh with a new brine. I'd say that these are "Medium spicy", which for me is spicy enough. Lower-spicy threshold will say "Those are spicy!" but keep eating them. People who regularly eat Thai and Indian food will think they are good and just keep eating them. I haven't been able to make them /too/ spicy yet. This may be a challenge for somebody. Probably putting sliced jalapeños in the jar with the pickles should kick them up, and make the pickled jalapeños tasty as well. Adding onion slices makes tasty pickled onions. It's a pretty tolerant recipe for changes. These are dynamite out of the jar as a snack or on a sandwich. We pretty much just eat them out of the jar at game night. Interspersed with chips, bread, cheese etc.