If you’ve visited a restaurant while visiting the deep south, I’m sure you’ve seen fried pickles on the menu. Fried pickles are a southern favorite and a pretty easy to make. Most folks who’ve never had a fried pickles tend to think the combination of frying a pickles as a little weird. However, I can promise you that once you try a fried pickle, you’ll order them every time you see them on the menu.

I’m kind of a fried pickle snob. Fried pickles, while delicious, can be easily ruined by one ingredient. Salt… a fried pickle that is too salty is sometimes just too difficult to eat, no matter how much ranch you cover it in. Finding the right pickle is pretty critical to the final product, so you’ll have to do a little bit of experimentation with the pickles available at your grocery store.

Even though you might experiment with pickle varieties, we have settled on our absolute favorite pickle. Pickles from Wickles are sweet, spicy, and just a little bit salty. Wickles are thicker than your average sliced pickle, so the pickle-to-crust ratio is great. However, some folks in the south prefer their pickles razor thin to maximize the amount of crust. I think this is just an excuse to eat more fried crust with ranch dressing. With Wickles, you can actually enjoy the great flavor of the pick itself. I find myself eating the pickles for a snack sometimes.

The easiest fried pickles have just four ingredients: pickles, buttermilk, cornmeal, and salt (in moderation). You can substitute the cornmeal with flour, but I don’t care a whole lot for the kind of crust it makes. A flour/corn starch/dried potato crust might work really well for a super crunch crust. However, I really enjoy the crunch and texture cornmeal brings to the party.

Ranch is normally served with fried pickles. This helps to cut the salt, but who doesn’t like ranch? Any ranch will do, but find a dressing you like to eat. If you are feeling super fancy, you can serve your pickles with some comeback sauce (coming soon).

Sweet and Spicy Fried Pickles

Sweet and spicy pickles is the perfect combination of pickles and breading. Don’t like the idea of sweet, change up your pickles.

Author: Ron Unz
Prep Time: 5 minutes
Cook Time: 10 minutes
Total Time: 15 minutes
Yield: 10 Servings
Category: Appetizer
Method: Deep Fried
Cuisine: Snacks

Ingredients

Peanut Oil
1 jar of Wickles (or your favorite sliced pickle)
1/2 cup of buttermilk
2 cups of corn meal
Salt to taste

Instructions

In a cast iron skillet, add enough peanut oil so the oil comes up about 1/2 an inch from the bottom of the skillet. You can use a deep fat fryer as well.
Heat the oil to 375 degrees F.
Dip the pickle slices in the buttermilk and let the excess drip off.
Toss in the corn meal and shake off any excess.
Fry in the hot oil until the exterior is golden brown.
Remove fried pickles from the oil and place on a cooling rack to let excess oil drip away.
Sprinkle with salt (taste a pickle to see if it even needs it first)
Serve warm with ranch dressing and a big glass of sweet tea.