How to Make Spice Powder Used for Pickling

Everybody likes pickles. And the secret behind the pickles' flavour and taste lies in the spices used in making the pickles. Though the ingredients may slightly vary, you can make a standard spice powder and store it for a long time for future use.

This instructable gives you a standard spice powder recipe you can make at your home.

The following ingredients are used in making the pickling spice powder. All the ingredients are taken in equal measures by weight. I have used 50 grams of each, you can increase the amount to suit your requirement.

• Dried red chilies
• Mustard seeds
• Cumin seeds
• Fenugreek seeds
• Asafoetida. Here I have used pure solid cubes

Place a frying pan over low flame and dry roast the Fenugreek seeds, cumin seeds and mustard seeds separately. Do not mix them while dry-roasting and also do not burn them. This step is to remove the moisture from the seeds. When the seeds starts to crack remove them from the pan and keep separately for cooling.

Using a mortar and pestle, crush the Asafoetida cubes into powder. Then dry roast the powder and keep aside.

Add a few drops of any cooking oil to the pan and roast the red chilies over low flame. There is no need to remove the stems from the red chilies. Remove from pan and allow it to cool.

Now we got all our spices roasted, cooled and ready to make powder.

Now place all ingredients in a mixer grinder and grind them to a fine powder. If you are making in large quantities then grind the ingredients separately and mix together afterwards.

Remove the spice powder from the mixer / grinder jar and spread it in a clean paper to cool. Once cooled, store it in a container for future use.

This spice powder can stored for a very long time. Use it as required to suit your taste while making pickle. As a rule of thump, use a tablespoon of spice powder for 100 grams of raw ingredient to be pickled

Happy Pickling...