Add homemade pickles to your springtime repertoire

First things first: making pickles is much easier than it seems. Get the images of grandma spending hours sealing and boiling cans out of your mind. Pickling is so easy that anyone—even the least accomplished cooks among us—can produce delicious results in under 30 minutes in the kitchen.

And pickled vegetables are so much more than dill cucumber spears! You can pickle just about anything, and the result is the perfect warm weather snack—crisp, clean, and healthy. All you need is some fresh produce, a few jars, and a few ingredients you already have in your pantry. After that, the only limits are your imagination.

Here’s how to do it:

-Get yourself some canning jars with lids

-Clean and cut your vegetables and stuff them in your jars (see our ideas for vegetable combos below)

-Make your brine. In a small saucepan, bring to a boil 2 cups of water, 1 cup of distilled white vinegar, 2 tablespoons of salt, 2 teaspoons of sugar, and up to 2 tablespoons of spices (peppercorns, caraway seeds, and/or mustard seeds, depending on your preference/recipe).

-Pour the hot brine over your vegetables in the jars and cover. Let the jars cool on the counter and then refrigerate.

-Let the jars chill in your fridge for a day or two before eating them—the thicker you cut your vegetables, the longer they’ll take to pickle. These pickles will keep for up to a month in the refrigerator. (For longer-lasting pickles you need to get into canning, which is the more involved—but quite rewarding—process that you probably picture grandma doing.)

Here are a few great vegetable combo ideas to get you started:

Cucumber spears

Dill

Caraway seeds

Black peppercorn

Garlic

Assorted mini sweet peppers

A jalapeno for spice

Garlic

Fresh parsley

Sweet corn

Red Onion

Jalapeno

Cilantro

Fennel

Tumeric

Mustard Seeds

Fennel Seeds