Lindale – Out in the woods in East Texas, whenever you come across a guy with a boiling pot over a roaring fire, that’s always a good sign. The man behind this boil in Andy Stills, and unfortunately, he’s not cooking crawfish, but rather sealing up his sought-after pickles. “Not many people would look at me and say, man, he makes pickles,” said Stills, owner of family pickle company Prohibition Pickles.
Luckily for Andy, pickling has never been about looking the part, and he has been rapidly mastering the art of pickles ever since he chose it as his pandemic hobby. But unlike most people who got into disc golf or trading cards while the world was temporarily shut down, Stills and his family have used their free time to kickstart a booming pickle business. It all started when they decided to plant a backyard garden.
“We planted four cucumber plants, and that year, we happened to have a lot of rain, and they exploded,” said Stills. “We had so many cucumbers that we were trying to give them away to neighbors. Neighbors already had some. They didn’t want anymore. We didn’t want to throw them away and waste them.” Being as cool as cucumber, Andy had an idea. “Basically, all of our families love pickles, so we’re like, we’ll give this a shot.”
Of course, that was easier said than done. Trying to figure out how to pickle to perfect pickle put Andy in a pickle. “Didn’t really work that simple,” said Stills. ‘You can’t just take the brine and first time make it taste good. You got to try and try and try. I think we tried about probably a good 50 times to get it just right, and that was just for a dill pickle.”
Today, Prohibition Pickles is a full-fledged pickle operation based out of the Stills’ family home, and they have gone crazy with creating flavors with everything from Garlic, Buffalo, to a Carolina Reaper edition. “People like weird stuff,” said Stills. “There’s a pickle fanatic market, is what we call it. People that’ll eat a whole jar of pickles in a sitting, or they get up in the middle of the night, and they just pop some pickles. That’s the market we cater to. We don’t cater to the ‘we’ll just go to Walmart and grab a jar of pickles ’cause we’re cooking burgers.’”
Every one of these jars is done by hand, and Stills is proud of his pickles because they’re all natural. “There’s no automation in it, of course,” said Stills. “We hand slice them, make the brine. We do it all old school, and then, like I said, the water bath canning to where we get them sealed. If you look at our labels, we don’t have some of the polysorbate 80, some of the stuff you can’t even pronounce, that are artificial preservatives. We let vinegar do its job.”
This pickle pursuit may be something that Andy only does on the side, but it packs in so much more into his life. It’s a chance to spend more time with family and preserve a few special memories. “The way I look at it, head of the household, trying to provide for your family,” said Stills. “Obviously want to get it bigger and try to get a little bit more comfortable. The ultimate goal, what I’d like to see, is when my daughter gets older, something that she can kind of get into and maybe take over. I’d love to see that.”