A little background: I love Alton Brown; I love pickles; I love Kool-Aid.
Alton introduced to me this amazing looking little hybrid pickle, the Koolickle, back in 2007 on his spinoff show, “Feasting on Asphalt.” It looked ridiculously simple to make, and Alton said it was surprisingly good. I planned then to try it someday.
Someday happened to come just recently. Don’t be quick to ASSume it’s a pregnancy thing. It’s actually a I-can’t-plan-in-advance thing. See, Koolickles take a few days to marinate, and it’s the sort of food you decide you’d like to try NOW, not one you want to make now and try in a few days.
I’d get an itch to try it, look up the recipe, see I needed a few days and decide to scrap the idea because I didn’t feel like waiting.
Finally, after three years, I decided I could wait.
I grabbed the recipe from a few different places and made it work for me. Most recipes started with a one-gallon pickle jar, and I had already bought a 46 oz. jar for the purpose.
Here’s what I used:
46-ounce (1 quart 14 ounces) jar whole dill pickles
1 cup sugar
2 cups water
2 packets red Kool-Aid (such as cherry flavored)
Drain and discard the juice from the pickle jar. Remove the pickles from the jar and cut each one in half lengthwise. Return the pickles to the jar and set aside.
In a large measuring cup, combine the sugar, water and Kool-aid. Mix until the sugar has completely dissolved. Pour enough of the liquid into the pickle jar to cover the pickles. Discard any excess.
Cover the jar and refrigerate at least 24 hours or as long as you can wait.
Except I JUST NOW realized I followed the instructions wrong (typical) and only used one packet of Kool-Aid. I’m actually OK with that because I wanted to still be able to taste the flavor of the normal dill pickle, and I just barely can with one packet of mix.
So what did I think? Meh. I’m not impressed. They aren’t bad. They aren’t awesome. They’re cherry-flavored dill pickles. It’s kinda cool to have a mixture of sweet and salty/tart (I love nothing more than a good salty/sweet combo), but neither is strong enough to have a true salty/sweet mixture.
After three years, I’m actually rather disappointed. Oh, well. I finally tried them!
I wonder if the magic happens if you use both packets of Kool-Aid? That thought would annoy me until I actually did it over…lol
Sounds…interesting.
I wonder if the salty flavor would be stronger if you kept the dill pickle juice in instead of water? Or would that just be gross?
I also love Alton Brown and pickles. Sorry your koolickles didn’t live up to expectations!
I think…no. Definitely no to these. My pregnant brain cannot even consider the idea of ruining perfectly good dill pickles with Koolaid. It’s very upsetting. I’m going to comfort myself by eating a whole jar right now.
that sounds absolutely foul. but i’m itching to try it.
Totally remember the show with kool aid pickles! I too love Alton Brown and I love Kool Aid. Pickles not so much.
Hmmm – I love Alton Brown, but not sure why he’d mess up a good thing :).
Now I’m curious…I think I’m gonna have to make some myself. They sound disgusting, but with my love of all things pickle, I can’t see how they could possibly be that bad.
I had a similar train-of-thought/experience w/ fried pickles. I figured, Hell, I love pickles, and I love all things deep-fried, ergo, fried pickles will be delightful! Alas, not really.
Also, I just started reading your blog around the time you got pregnant, and I am sincerely and heartfeltly so happy and totally rooting for you all! And I love the blog.
Maybe if you used both packets of Kool-Aid it would taste better…?
Darn it now I’m curious.
This sounds positively foul though.
I may have to try it anyway just to see for myself.
We’ll see.
Don’t kill me, but even being pregnant myself and loving pickles, this blog post make me get grossed outloud and freak out my cube mates. Nothing sounds yummy about this – and I love Alton Brown. So disappointed. Back to craving those salt caramels he makes.
I almost bought the stuff to do this last night, even though I think it looks nasty. LOL
I remember that episode of Feasting on Asphalt! Sorry to hear the coolickle didn’t live up to your expectations. I don’t have the guts to try it!
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Jenny and Jenny, Jenny. Jenny said: I've waited 3 years for THIS?: http://bit.ly/arIlXZ #koolickles #recipe […]
Girl, just make pickle pops! Freeze some dill pickle juice in popsicle molds. Enjoy when they are frozen solid! SO DELSIH.