Pickling – Delicious Recipes for Making Pickles at Home

Basically, pickling has been used for long time in preserving fruits and vegetables. Actually it's considered as the earliest form of preserving food.
Equipment and ingredients used when making pickles are more or less the same for all types of pickles and in fact, what varies are the spices and the fruits used. Nevertheless, the equipment needed include; jars with lids, water baths, spoons etc, while ingredients include pickling salt, fruits, vegetables, spices such as mustard and cumin seeds, allspice, cloves, garlic, oil, vinegar and so on. However, if you wish to learn how to make pickles, then read on.
For cucumber pickles; wash and slice the cucumber, place it in a sink or tub, add salt, leave it for two hours and remove the cucumbers. Next, mix sugar, water, salt, mustard seeds and other ingredients mentioned as per specific recipe and boil. Then put the cucumbers in a sterilized jar and pour the hot mixture over them. Cover the jar air tight and place it in boiling water for 10 minutes. When you're done, let it cool down and store in a dark place for 2 months. After this period, the pickles are ready for consumption.
You can easily go to your local supermarket and purchase a readily made supply of pickling spices however I for one like to variety my mixture according to the pickling that I intend to do. Being involving in canning and preserving food for a long time I have accumulated several favorite recipes for pickling spices. The usual ingredient food in most commercial spice mixes are mustard seed, cinnamon, allspice, bay leaves, clove, dill seed, ginger, coriander, peppercorns, mace, juniper berries and cardamom. The particular one that you buy may contain any or all of these spices. In addition, those people who desire a hotter spice mix may care to add items such as crushed hot peppers.

The whole point about home preserving is that you can produce products to your taste. So a little tweak of your pickling recipe, here and there, should not be a problem. In fact the results will be better as they will taste of the things you like. If you are after a generic product, why bother making it yourself when there are perfectly enjoyable items available to buy.
A little variety in the kitchen, as elsewhere in life is always good. Okay sometimes you run into the odd snag, and occasionally things can go very wrong. But it is only food. You will learn by both your failures and your successes. So learn to adapt, modify and make every recipe for pickles your own.