Pickles, Illustrated: A Cookbook of 36 Recipes and Briny Miscellany

Ready to get pickling? This brightly illustrated guide is your invitation to a voyage down the Great Pickle Highway, with 36 recipes for famous and funky ferments, along with a jarful of fascinating pickle tidbits and lore.

Pickled foods come in all shapes and sizes, from spicy, bold shreds of classic kimchi to slightly sweet, crunchy bread and butter discs. Inside Pickles, Illustrated, you’ll discover four categories of pickles: sour-ish, savory-ish, sweet-ish, and spicy-ish. Recipes for classics such as Pickled Red Onion sit alongside deeper cuts like Spicy Blackened Szechuan Pickled Peppers—all delicious options for your next charcuterie board.

Instructions for each recipe include the preferred pickling method as well as expert guidance on the type of salt best suited for that particular pickled delicacy (whichever fruit, veggie, seafood, or mix of ingredients it may be). The four preserving methods employed throughout are:

• Quick pickles, or quickles
• Refrigerator pickles
• Fermentation
• Salt-curing

Sprinkled among the recipes are salty bits of pickle culture and traditions from around the world, like the origins of Kimchi Day in Korea and the history behind the ubiquitous pickle holiday ornament. In a pickle to find a gift for the pickle lover in your life? Relish this moment—you’ve found it!