MINNEAPOLIS -- You can pick a peck of pickles at the Minnesota State Fair.

There are pickles in the pies, the cookies, the corn dogs, the beer, the popsicles, the iced tea, the pizza. Pickles on sticks. Pickles in the lemonade. Pickles in the hummus. Pickles bobbing and burbling in the deep friers.

It’s brine’s time to shine.

The Great Minnesota Get-Together has been a perfect pickle pairing since the pickle on a stick debuted in 1971.

By 1998, the first briny battered bites had hit the friers at the Perfect Pickle stand. Sometimes you just need a taste of something acidic and bright to cut through all the greasy, sticky, salty fair food. It became popular enough to warrant a second stand.

These days, the list of new State Fair foods usually reveals someone putting pickles where pickles ought not to be. Because the funniest fair foods always feel like they started with a dare.

Minnesotans survived the year of the pickle fudge and the pickle doughnut, which was also the year of the pickle lemonade, the pickle paleta and the pickle cheese curd taco. There was never a dill moment in 2023.

The original pickle stand

There’s one other place on the fairgrounds where pickles always have been and always will be a big dill: The Creative Activities Building. There, shelves full of pickles gleam in cases between the quilts and crafts and baked goods.

Anyone can open a jar of pickles; it takes determination and skill to pickle them yourself. Every year, more Minnesotans take up the challenge and submit their home-canned pickles for State Fair competition, under the watchful eye of canning coordinator Mary Bartz.

State Fair canning entries jumped 20% across all categories this year. That’s more than 1,300 people who submitted more than 4,100 entries. Jams. Jellies. Salsas. A rainbow of pickled fruits and vegetables.

“It’s a creative endeavor and a fulfilling way to show your love of canning,” said Bartz, who brings impeccable credentials to the Creative Activities Building.

After graduating with a degree in food science, she worked at General Mills for almost three decades, working her way up to director of the Betty Crocker Kitchens. Later, she moved on to food communication for the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association.

She spent part of this summer judging canned goods and 4-H competitions at half a dozen Minnesota county fairs, always with an eye on food safety. Nothing ruins a pickle judge’s day like food poisoning.

Once the judges are satisfied that a jar of pickles is safe and well-made, they move on to the fun stuff: how it looks, smells and — best of all — tastes. (For those interested in safe and delicious pickling, she recommends recipes and instructions from the National Center for Home Food Preservation at the University of Georgia.)

“Sometimes I taste the brine separately, so I get a feel for what’s to come,” she said. “When you’re eating the pickled cucumber, or whatever the pickled product is, it’s the combination of the texture and the flavor. You want a really nice balance of salt.”

Even someone who’s spent days sampling a state’s worth of pickles isn’t immune to the charms of pickled fair food. Bartz isn’t a fan of crowds and she tries to eschew fried foods. But sometimes the deep-fried pickles call, and she must answer.

It’s easy to spot the pickle people. Bartz knows a canning enthusiast who had a pickle tattooed on her arm as an indelible sign of their passion. For Bartz’s birthday this year, a friend gifted her a pair of earrings shaped like jars of “emotional support pickles.”

“We have a passion for pickles,” she said. “And for jams and jellies and relishes.”

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