Yup, works fine! Just don't pack them in too tight. I drop into the jar and give it a little shake so they settle in, but don't push down on them. Spears, chunks, slices, whole.........it's all cukes! Sometimes those big ones are fun if you have any little kids around! Ask if they want a pickle, then pull out something the size of their wrist!!! One year I had a cuke that "got missed" in picking. Just for fun, I put ONE cuke in a quart jar and pickled it. I gave it to my youngest daughter at Christmas because she raved all year about how much she loved dill pickles. Gotta be careful what you say around here... Deanna

If you were to pull up the many making pickles discussions here the one point you'd find running through them all is that the best pickles are made using only fresh picked pickling variety cukes - less than 24 hours old - and of the proper size. Otherwise you end up with soft, even mushy, but definitely not crisp pickles. This is especially true for dill pickles where a crispness is expected.. Other types, sizes, and ages of cukes are used for things like Bread & Butter, Slippery Jacks, Chunk Sweets, etc. that are more tolerant of older cukes since most expect them to be a softer pickles. Then there are the issues with using a prepared mix rather than making them from scratch. As already mentioned some mixes already have Pickle Crisp added to them which can really help, other mixes do not. The mixes also have less than ideal pickle-making directions. So if you want good dill pickles and if you want to use the Mrs. Wages mix then use only the very best, very fresh cucumbers not the old, bug ones. If they are not pickling cukes but are slicer types then as Marla said cut them into spears, not slices. And buy a jar of Pickle Crisp to add to the jars per label instructions. Most importantly use a good 12-24 hour iced salt pre-soak on them to try to improve the crispness not the usual 2-3 hours soak some packets call for. They won't be great dill pickles but they will be good. Hope this helps. Dave

Thanks!! really appreciate all the feedback. I'll post the whole recipe later (don't have internet connection at home right now, don't have recipe here) but first it has you bringing 2 cups of pickling salt and 4 qts of water to a boil, pouring over pickles in a crock, placing a plate on top of the liquid, weighting down as necessary, and stirring every day for 8 days. Then on the 8th day you start in with an alum / cinnamon oil / clove oil mixture, and on some kind of schedule for the next six days you pour that off, boil it, and return it to the crock. I think my cukes are too big anyway. Granny would pick them about thumb sized from her garden.... I am relying on farmer's market stuff and it's not going so well. Yeah, i know... grow my own next year.... I'll have to read up on fermentation. most of the recipes I saw on brining and fermentation were for really long periods, like 6 weeks? thanks again!

Sure you can Astrid. ;) I'll even stick my neck out and say that most don't use pickling cukes to make their pickles with - especially sliced varieties. Regular cucumbers make great bread and butter, dill slices or slabs or spears, sweet slices or chunks, relishes, etc. The slices may be a little bigger than those from pickling varieties but just as good. We like dill slabs for hamburgers so I cut the cuke on the diagonal (degree is your choice) into about 3/8 inch slices and stack them in quart jars with a head of dill, pour on the boiling dill mix (3 c sugar, 2 T canning salt, 6 c vinegar, 2 T pickling spice) and process 10 min. in BWB. Just one idea. ;) Dave PS: I soak the cuke slabs in heavily iced water for 2 hours before putting them in jars. Keeps them crisper.