Pickling Spice

Pickling spice is the flavour bomb of your pickles - you may also find pickling spice called for in recipes with a brining step, like corned beef. I try to avoid buying pre-mixed spice blends; having the ingredients on hand and mixing my own when needed is my preferred way of doing things. Plus, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen ‘pickling spice’ in an Australian supermarket.

Pickling spice is something you make to your taste. Like it spicy? Easy, more chilli. Like it a bit more floral? Maybe a bit more cinnamon. I will change this up based on what I feel like and sometimes what is available.

In this particular mix, I’ve used ground All Spice rather than the whole All Spice berries, as I can’t get my hands on them! Given that, I’ve halved the amount of All Spice I would generally use (ground spice will be more densely packed in a measuring spoon).

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Ingredients

• 1.5 tbs Mustard seeds (US 2 tbs)

• 1.5 tbs all spice berries (US 2 tbs)

• 2 tsp coriander seeds

• 1 tsp chilli flakes

• 1 tsp ground ginger

• 2 dry bay leaves

• 2 cinnamon sticks

• 6 cloves

Method

1. Add everything to a small bowl, except bay leaves and cinnamon sticks

2. Roughly break up the cinnamon sticks (just use your hands), add to mix

3. Tear up the bay leaves and add to mix

4. Mix together, store in air tight glass jar (see notes)

5. Mix will be fine for a couple of months stored in a dark pantry

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Recipe Notes

• Tablespoon measures in my recipes are in metric by default, I try to remember to put the US measure in also. But when it comes to a pickling spice, it doesn’t have to be an incredibly precise measure.

• Go ahead and tweak these ratios to suit your own pallet.

• Whole versions of spices are preferred (e.g. all spice, coriander seed) but don’t beat yourself up! If you need to go with a ground version, do it. In this case I needed to use ground all spice as the whole berries are a bit tricky to get; I adjusted the volume, using half of the amount of ground versus whole berry.

• Storage: if you have a glass jar, opt for that instead of plastic. You’ve got a lot of flavours and aromas going on in this mix, plastic containers will likely absorb those and stick around for a long time!