When Good Pickles Go bad

This used to be a dill pickle. Once upon a time it was green. The exterior remains pebbly, a reminder that long ago it began it's  life on a farm, on the ground, as a cucumber.

But it now has an arresting color that combines green and garnet, and a bracing sour-sweet taste that it owes to a long marinade in cherry or tropical fruit or strawberry Kool-Aid. Yep. You got that right. Kool-Aid.


The pickles have been spotted as far afield as Dallas and St. Louis, but their cult is thickest in the Delta region, among the black majority population. In the Delta, where they fetch between 50 cents and a dollar, Kool-Aid pickles have earned valued space next to such beloved snacks as pickled eggs and pigs’ feet at community fairs, convenience stores and filling stations.

Nobody knows just who first decided that pickles would be improved by a bath in sugared drink mix, or when. In my day, we used to stick a peppermint stick in the middle, but the invention seems to be of fairly recent provenance.

Here's the recipe to make your very own "Koollicle".

• 1 gallon jar dill pickles
• 1 lb granulated sugar
• 2 pkgs. unsweetened Kool-Aid 

Place a colander over a large bowl and drain all of the pickle brine. Do not discard the brine.

Mix the Kool Aid, sugar and brine together.  Place pickles in large jar and pour brine over pickles, making sure you cover them completely.

Seal the jar and place the pickles in the refrigerator for one week. The pickles will absorb the Kool-Aid brine and take on their new color and flavor. Don't be alarmed if the pickles shrink slightly -this is completely normal.