5 gallons of real pickles from NYC

Today I made like Peter Riegert in Crossing Delancey:  my 5 gallon bucket of Guss’ Pickles arrived from New York.  These are the real thing – fermented in brine with NO VINEGAR.  Decent pickles here cost an arm and a leg, are hard to come by and, since I didn’t make any myself this summer, I had to have them express mailed to me.  Why 5 gallons, you ask?  The shipping is so pricey that it is not cost effective to purchase individual gallon containers – plus, they keep for months and we were only interested in the full sours anyway.  That’s why.  I’m writing this entry three days later and I think we are down a couple quarts, at least, so this will not be a problem.  I divided up the large pail into smaller containers, so we should be set for quite some time.  Guss’ Pickles is a New York City institution, having operated on the Lower East Side for years.  If you want to order them, here’s the site:  www.gusspickle.com.  Note that Guss’ pickles is a bit like Ray’s pizza in that you will find many operations using the name in one form or another or making this or that claim, but the guys in New Jersey who’ll mail you pickles can be traced back to the founder, Izzy Guss.  If you want the whole spiel, just Google “Guss’ pickles” or check out the Wiki entry.

Guss' Pickles from NYC