Just the other day, we finished up the last of our pickling spice, and, while we could pick some up at the store next time we’re out, what would be the fun in that? Besides, we had an empty pickling spice tin we could simply refill. Even better than that, this tin basically told us how to make our own pickling spice. Well, we’re all over that.
It wasn’t a recipe, but it was a list of ingredients, and we had everything on the list. Now, we didn’t have any idea about the amounts of each, except that ingredients are listed in descending amounts (by weight, we think), so all we had to do was figure out the amounts. The proportions in pickling spice aren’t critical, so we just made some up, based on what we liked. Ta da! Our Scratchin’ It pickling spice was born!
Pickling Spice
Ingredients
- 1/2 tsp cloves
- Inch long piece of cinnamon
- 2 Tbs yellow mustard seeds
- 2 Tbs brown mustard seeds
- 1 tsp black peppercorns
- 1 tsp dried ginger
- 4 bay leaves
- 1/2 tsp caraway seeds
- 1/2 tsp allspice
- 1/2 tsp red pepper flake
Instructions
- Combine all ingredients in a small bowl, breaking the cinnamon and bay leaves into small pieces with your fingers. Stir to mix, transfer to a spice container.
Ingredient discussion:
We would like to have used allspice berries in place of the ground allspice, and pieces of dried ginger instead of ginger powder, but we didn’t have those, so we used what we had. If you’re missing one or two spices on the list, especially the spices with smaller amounts, don’t sweat it. Make the pickling spice, anyway. There’s no one right set of ingredients.
Procedure in detail:
Combine and pack. Not much for spice mixes; simply break apart the cinnamon stick and bay leaves by hand, place everything in a small bowl and stir to combine. We just put our spice mix back into our old pickling spice tin.
We don’t use pickling spice all that often (you probably don’t, either), but we did make up a quick batch of Light Coleslaw to test it out. We couldn’t tell the difference between our version of pickling spice and that from the store, so we think that’s a keeper. Five stars.
