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Best pickles

Find out which dill pickles are the top picks

Consumer Reports magazine: June 2012

We gave Peter Piper a rest and asked five trained tasters to spend three days sampling 10 brands of dill pickles, whole or in spears (we cut the whole ones into spears to level the playing field). The winner: Whole Foods 365 Everyday Value, with its pleasing balance of garlic, salt, sourness, and spices. Whole Foods and runner-up Trader Joe’s are whole pickles and have desirably crispy skins with crunchy insides.

The rest of the tested pickles are spears, and most are very good. The Ba-Tampte were lowest-rated yet cost more than most.

A pickle spear has only about 4 calories but about 300 milligrams of sodium, roughly 13 percent of the recommended daily limit for most people.

Bottom line. Whole Foods 365 Everyday Value dills are tastiest; runners-up Trader Joe’s and Walmart’s Great Value cost less. See our Ratings (available to subscribers) below.

Pickle primer

Dill sometimes means that pickles have had dill weed added to their brine. Other times it just refers to large size.

Kosher doesn’t necessarily indicate that pickles were prepared under a rabbi’s supervision, just that garlic was added to the brine.
See the Ratings charts as they originally appeared in the June 2012 issue of Consumer Reports Magazine.
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