Homemade Pickling Spice

Why buy when you can make it? This homemade pickling spice recipe is super, super easy, and fantastic to have on hand for all your brining needs.

If you know me, you know I’m a fan of making my own food. I even make my own ingredients for my food when I can. A few weeks ago it was home-canned chili beans, and a few weeks before that, it was canned pumpkin butter.

I’m working on making my own ingredients part by planting onions yesterday, and (hopefully) getting new chickens within the next few weeks.

Let’s be honest, it’s easy enough to pick up a jar of pre-made pickling spice at the grocery store, and as long as you read the ingredients first to make sure there isn’t anything insidious hiding in that bottle, it’s all good, right?

Sure.

As long as you read that ingredient label, and you’re sure.

But how can you be sure when clearly printed right there at the bottom of the ingredient list is the oh-so nebulous “spice”. What the heck is spice? the entire list above that word is a list of different kinds of spices – cloves, cinnamon, ginger, allspice… – so what is “spice”?

Sounds like something Han Solo smuggled out of Kessel.

Wait. Please don’t leave. I promise not to let the geek out.

“Spice” is often a blanket term for preservatives – sulfites, sulfates, and the like. Those two ingredients are the whole reason we make our own bacon.

While I haven’t had a problem with nebulous ingredients in my pumpkin pie spice, and really just make homemade pumpkin pie spice for fun (I guess), every jar of pickling spice seems to end in “spices”.

And then there’s the cost aspect.

When you buy herbs in bulk, or grow your own, making homemade pickling spice is cheaper. There’s just no question about it.

Even if you don’t buy in bulk, compare the price of individual spices to the price of the pre-made spice mix on a per-ounce, or per-gram basis. You’ll be shocked!

This is why I decided to learn how to make pickling spice ahead of Saint Patrick’s Day.

What does Saint Patty’s Day have to do with it?

Ah, that’s pretty simple actually. Sure, you use pickling spice to make actual pickles. Without pickling spice, you can’t make corned beef, and without corned beef well, is it really St. Patricks Day?

I don’t think so.

Homemade pickling spice is an obvious necessity. 😉

Making Your Own Pickling Spice

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