Then I am mystified. I have never ever had a jar of refrigerator pickles made without boiling liquid turn mushy.
I supose they do get that way eventually, but not if you eat them right away, or else the cukes were not of good quality.
“the cukes were not of good quality.”
That could be the problem. They were from a neighbor’s overgrown garden. Will try again.
We have been inundated with cucumbers so I have been making “freezer” pickles. I’ve made ‘refrigerator’ pickles before & the recipe called for boiling them. These freezer pickles are a ‘cold’ process. Instead of using a bowl (don’t have enough room for one in the fridge, we’ve been using very large mayo jars (like 64 oz. large) and it seems to work fine - instead of stirring, we just turn the jar over a couple of times every day to remix and makes sure all the pickles have liquid on them. As for the ‘too large’ cukes, I cut them in half lengthwise, take a spoon & scoop the seeds, then slice. We call these “pickle bits” - I like them drained & on a tuna sandwich - sweet/sour/salty crunch is good!
Here is the link to the recipe I’m using - supposedly these will stay crunchy for 8 months. We have put our pickles in smaller (3.5 - 4 cup) containers for freezing, once we move them out of the fridge part of the process. The hard part is getting them to the freezer since they’re so good and we keep snacking! I had to make double batches to fill my jars. I did modify the recipe in two ways - I cut the sugar in half and I left out the peppers .... otherwise, I have followed directions - we’ll see how these hold up in a few months:
http://www.food.com/recipe/crisp-cucumber-freezer-pickles-9458