Mango Pickle from India

Subhorup Dasgupta

Is following this blog from India. He is an avid chile cook and food writer. He left a comment about our fire roasted chiles. This guy really knows his stuff, below is a recipe directly from his blog. Check him out and give this delicious recipe a try.

http://sitakirasoi.blogspot.com/

Here is the recipe

For 2 kg mangoes (made into 1/2 inch cubes including the hard inner core, wiped clean and dry with a damp cloth)
You will need:
The mango pieces (dummies like me would need this ingredient listed out here)

Ginger - 200 g (make a paste separately)
Garlic - 200 g (make a paste separately)
Chili powder - 200 g (we used Three Mangoes brand, which uses Warangal chilis)

Rock salt - 500 g
Turmeric powder - 1/2 tsp
Powdered Cumin or Jeera -1 tsp (freshly roasted and ground into a powder)

Fenugreek or Methi seed powder - 1 tsp
Sesame or Gingelly Oil - 500 ml
Whole cumin seeds - 1 tsp
Mustard seeds - 1tsp
Whole fenugreek or methi seeds - 1/2 tsp
Preparation:
1. Heat the oil and when smoking, add whole cumin and mustard. Allow to sizzle and brown. Add whole methi seeds and immediately take it off the heat and allow the mix to cool down to room temperature.

2. Once cool to touch, add chili powder, salt, ginger paste, garlic paste, cumin powder, methi powder, and turmeric powder.

3. Mix well and then add mangoes, mix again, and transfer them into a glass jar.

You may want to add 20 to 50 cloves of garlic into this at the end of the process, or even a day or two later, if you are a garlic addict like me.

Make sure that all jars, spoons, ladles, mango pieces are totally dry, since any water that sneaks into the pickle will decimate its shelf life as well as taste going forward.

Keep a weekend free for this, it takes an entire day to prepare, in addition to time for procuring the ingredients and getting them ready. You will also want to catch some rest once you are done, not easy if you have to get to work the next morning.

Even though this is a pickle, and takes a while (about a week) to get there, do not forget to taste the fresh pickle with the very first meal after you have made it. It makes all the effort seem worth it.

This is what our pickle looked like a week later. Do let us know what you think in the comments.