Trying Out “The Pickle Guys” Pickles & Assorted Pickled Vegetables
Posted on July 18, 2023 Posted by Athena Scalzi 23 Comments
I was scrolling on Tik Tok when I saw a pickle review video over various items from The Pickle Guys. I thought to myself, I sure would like to do a pickle review. So I am!
After perusing all the different types of pickles and pickled vegetables (and fruits!) they offer on their website, I ended up getting this assortment:
Starting on the left, we have garlic, grape tomatoes, okra, baby corn, 3/4 sour pickles, horseradish pickles, and new pickles. You’re probably thinking, what the heck is the 3/4 for? Well, they have regular sour pickles, half sour pickles, and 3/4 sour pickles. I thought about getting the sour, but I didn’t want them to be too sour, but I also thought half would be not sour enough! So I settled for the 3/4 sour. As for the new pickles, that just means they haven’t been pickled nearly as long as their other pickles.
This was a lot of pickle to tackle, so I enlisted the help of my father.
We started with the new pickles, and just as you might suspect, they were quite cucumbery! They had a decent crunch to them, with a mild flavor and some garlic-ness throughout. They had an interesting sparkly feeling on the tongue, almost like they were carbonated. Overall, the new pickles were a good start to our endeavor.
Next, we tried the garlic. Eating a whole clove of garlic seemed a bit intimidating at first, but it was actually quite pleasant, as they were nowhere near overpowering. It reminded me of how roasted garlic still holds a ton of garlic flavor, but without the intense bite that garlic has when raw. They were a little strange in flavor, but still pretty good.
Thirdly, I picked the baby corn to try. Now this was definitely the most funny-face-inducing item of the bunch. They really had a certain zing to them, which my dad attributes to the fact that there’s lemon juice in the pickle brine. They had a much softer bite in comparison to the crunchier pickle and firmer garlic. I definitely enjoyed these ones.
I wanted to give the horseradish ones a go, as I figured they’d be quite strong tasting. To our surprise, they weren’t overpowering at all, and weren’t painful to consume like some horseradish-y items can be. They weren’t sinus-clearing level of horseradish-y, more so just had a nice flavor overall. They were quite snackable.
Onto the okra! Okra is something I rarely have, and usually when I have it, it’s fried. I find the slimy texture of it when its cooked rather interesting, and since these were uncooked I was curious if they would still have that mucilaginous consistency to them. I will say that they did, but it was so slight it was almost unnoticeable. What was noticeable, however, was that the okra in particular had a slight kick to them, likely due to the fact the brine contained crushed red pepper. All in all, they were good! I was happy to try something more unusual for me.
Back to the pickles, we tried the 3/4 sour ones. Turns out, they weren’t very sour! I could’ve totally gone with the full sour, and I’m glad I didn’t go for the half sour. My dad and I immediately noticed something odd about these sour pickles (other than that they weren’t really that sour), and it was that they had a distinct floral taste to them. Not exactly sure where that was coming from, but it was definitely there.
Lastly, we went for the grape tomatoes. I really didn’t know what to expect from these, but WOW these packed a wallop, and were extremely tasty! They were super squishy and popped between your teeth, gushing out the super flavorful insides. They were really fascinating, honestly.
Once we had tried everything, my dad ranked them as follows: tomatoes, new pickles, okra, horseradish pickles, baby corn, 3/4 sour pickles, and garlic.
For me, it was: tomatoes, baby corn, new pickles, okra, horseradish pickles, 3/4 sour pickles, and garlic.
So, really, I just happened to like the baby corn more than he did, but other than that we agree almost entirely! Also, just because the 3/4 sour pickles and garlic are at the end of the list doesn’t mean they were bad or anything. In fact, we really liked everything! Nothing was a disappointment in the slightest.
Now that we’ve determined how yummy everything was, let’s talk about price. These pickles come from a small pickle shop in New York, and are definitely on the bougie side of the pickling world. This ain’t no Vlasic, you know.
For all seven quart jars, my total was $111.50. I had thought that I saw on Tik Tok that if you spent 100 dollars, you got free shipping, but I must have misread or been misinformed because that was not the case. The shipping was so much that I almost did not go through with my order, as I was shocked by just how much it was. Shipping was $50.15, bringing my total to $161.65.
I really debated not buying them, but I had already spent like twenty minutes picking out everything I wanted and I knew I wanted to do a post over them, so I just did it.
Shipping cost aside, I would say the price is worth it. All of the pickles were only $10.50, so they’re definitely worth it. It’s a harder sell for the other pickled items, as they average about twenty bucks a jar. All in all, everything was good and will surely last a while, so it’s worth it in my eyes. That shipping cost, though, YEESH.
Anyways, if you’re in New York, give this shop a visit, and try some pickles!
Are you a pickle lover? Do you like dill, sweet gherkins, or bread and butter? Which pickled vegetable would you try? Let me know in the comments, and have a great day!
-AMS
Used to be that the Lowe East Side in NYC was home to a lot of pickle shops. These days I think The Pickle Guys are all that’s left.
We do still have a pickle festival in October that’s worth going to, but it gets crowded!
$50 for shipping seems like a total ripoff to me too. How is it that I reached this age without knowing that there was such a thing as 3/4 sour pickles? Sour is too much for me, so I would try these.
I would cancel a $50 shipping on $100 order in a heartbeat just on general principles. I’m not as rich as your dad, but I’m not eating cat food either. I guess it’s kinda like I don’t do concerts anymore. I’m not paying $30 “service” charges on a $35 seat (unless it’s Dream Theater).
That said, every time you do one of these I hope for a post from your dad starting with “So my daughter showed up with a bunch of $stuff she wanted us to try….”.
For having with sandwiches I stick with a good dill spear, usually Grillos. For snacking, nothing beats pickled baby carrots (can do a ton with them, great for home pickling)
Well that’s one way to get pickled! (Several ways, in fact…)
Now I must try making grape tomatoes pickles. They sound wonderful.
Shipping heavy, breakable things is expensive, so there’s that, but yeah. I would not have gone for that.
That said, comparative food tastings are extremely fun, and should on average be counted in the “experiences” category rather than the “I paid how much for a pickle?” category if you have the budget for an experiences category. And small companies don’t have the machinery to make each jar as cheap, so the price-per-jar is also not shocking to me, considering that they’re probably hand-packed by humans hopefully earning enough money to live on. Anyway: pickle tasting sounds fun. :-)
(BUT I may be biased since I hosted a pickle-tasting party when I was a teenager. Everyone brought a different jar of pickles. It was really fun, although if I did it again, I’d have some extremely neutral and inert foods on hand, because I no longer have a teenage digestive system and 10 pickles in a row sounds like a tall order.)(It was also very cheap per person, since we were in fact going for Vlasic or even generic brands – but most of us had mainly eaten whatever pickle our family kept in stock, which was usually one type, but we’d seen others in the supermarket, so: sweet pickle? dill? bread and butter? kosher? cornichons? No longer were the contents of those other jars on the shelves a mystery to us. :-) )
The red pepper’s presence in the pickled okra was probably due to both being common ingredients in Cajun/Creole cooking.
A housemate has been on a home-pickling jag the last few months, trying almost anything available from the garden or produce department. Haven’t tried any of the results yet (housemate has a restricted diet, so when they make something, tend to leave it all for them), though the pickled eggs certainly tempt, and the pickled apples and pickled tofu sound… interesting.
I’ve seen pickled okra marketed with “things to put in your Bloody Mary”, along with pickled asparagus.
$50 shipping, while really annoying, does not seem out of line for 7 quarts of stuff that REALLY needs to not break in shipment.
I like dill pickles and other savory pickles best.
We love The Pickle Guys and always try to get by there when visiting NY. The horseradish pickles are my favorite, closely followed by the okra, which is better than any local okra this Southern girl has ever had. Last trip we tried the mango and it was delicious, too!
I wonder if you could use the garlic in cooking…such as garlic chicken, sliced in a salad, or softened to use on garlic bread. Pickled garlic bread? Perhaps not. The tomatoes sound like using them in salads would be a definite yes. The world is a wonderful and various place, and I’m glad you’re experiencing it. That’s what money is for, once subsistence is assured.
I make pickled grape tomatoes!
I use the same brine that I use for our regular dill cucumber pickles. I also prick the tomatoes before they go in – usually with the points on a corn skewer. It helps the brine penetrate better, and also softens the “burst” when you eat them (the burst was too much for me).
My brine is a home concoction, based on refrigerator pickles and Chinese countertop water-jar pickles. Basically I figured out the water/vinegar/salt ratios, stuck with that, and fiddled with spices (peppercorns, crushed red pepper, dill, and garlic) until we were happy. I pickle in the Chinese pickling jars, and if I need to empty one we store the remainder in the fridge.
Sounds yummy! I like to make quick Asian style pickles. Cucumbers, rice wine vinegar and sugar.
If you are going to NYC, and plan to go to The Pickle Guys, you might also want to go a couple of doors down to Kosar’s to get great bagels and bialys. Their bialys are the standard by which I measure all others. A couple more doors down, there’s The Doughnut Plant which always has something interesting to try.
I was totally ready to order until you added the shipping cost. This looks awesome and is definitely on my list if I find myself in NYC. Thank you again for a great review!
Dilly beans! I had a friend and coworker who used to make these pickled green beans, and they were my hands down favorite pickle ever. They were pickled with a whole head of dill, a clove of garlic and possibly some mustard seed, and they had a real snap to them. She used to gift her coworkers with homemade pickles at Christmas, and always gave me a jar of her dilly beans. I did my best to make them last all year.
I love pickles, too! Thank you for sharing. When I lived in the NE, I often got a large deli kosher dill as a meal, or to make cheese and pickle sandwiches for several days. (I was very poor, and it was a nice change from beans and rice, or peanut butter.)
These days, I have turned into my dad, who pickled everything. There was always a big jar in the fridge of our garden veg pickles, and boiled eggs. Now I do it. Since you enjoy cooking, you might enjoy making home pickles, too.
In my opinion this is not too bad in terms of value for money. Seven jars of pickled vegetables at once is a lot, but they probably keep for quite a while in the refrigerator. Since there were no duds in the lot they might all get eaten eventually. Plus, you had an interesting experience to write about and did a service by providing an honest review.
Personally, I would think about buying one jar of pickles, probably the horseradish pickles, which sounds like it would be around $15 including shipping. That’s a little pricey for pickles, but I eat quite a few simple cheese sandwiches and slices of a flavorful pickle make a big difference in how happy I am to be eating them.
I like pickled okra but I probably wouldn’t order it for that price. I am intrigued by the pickled tomatoes and pickled garlic. I would try eating them straight, but the pickled garlic in particular would probably end up as an ingredient in soup, pizza, or who knows what.
I’ll be disappointed in your father if none of these pickles end up in a burrito.
Different pickles for different things.
Dill chips in sandwiches, though I have turned to mushrooms and a touch of gravy for burgers.
Dill pickle spears with seafood
Bread and Butter pickles for chopping up in salads ( Tuna, chicken or potato)
Just munching: watermelon rind pickles or pickled green tomatoes.
If bored I get pickles from Texas, where a friend’s father gives me great deals.
I’ve been on a home pickling kick for the last 18 months or so, inspired by Joshua McFadden’s book “Six Seasons”. We keep a bin of pickling liquid in the fridge and rotate slices of cucumber, carrots, red onion, cauliflower, and other goodies through it. Great for lunchtime snacking.
I have found that garlic needs to be cooked in a hot brine or it stays too bitey garlicky.
But cool review and I might be inspired to try some similar recipes.
I love The Pickle Guys. The half-sours are the taste of my childhood. No they aren’t real sour, but it’s about the intensity of the brining. That floral taste is coriander.
As to shipping, they have several free shipping options when you buy certain packages. It actually comes out cheaper than buying high-end pickles at my local store.
I don’t buy from them in the summer though. When the picklers start coming in, time to make my own!
“mucilaginous” what a great word! Must remember to use it.