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The mango trees are having WAY too much fruit for me to eat. It's time to make vadu manga (tiny sour mango) pickle. Full set will continue to be uploaded here. https://flic.kr/s/aHsjX7rwzc Why? Because if your tree spends all its effort on hundreds of tiny little mangoes, none of them are going to be as fat, sweet, juicy, and ripe as they will be if you thin the herd a bit. Also, vadu manga pickle is FREAKING AWESOME. If you mention it to any Tamil person, you'll instantly see his/her eyes light up with happiness. It's one of those childhood memories that you never forget. However, it is a process that takes a bit of time. If you want a shortcut version, just chop the mangoes into small pieces, toss with salt, ground red chilies, and some turmeric, and call it a night. It'll be ready in one day. Pick the smallest, unripe-est mangoes you can find.  Soak in water overnight to remove the sap. The next day, dry on a towel until bone dry. Water is the enemy of the mango pickle. Avoid at all costs. Once the mangoes are bone dry, toss them in a bit of oil.   Toss in obscene amounts of salt. Use ONLY salt with no added crap in. I like Diamon Kosher Salt. You can use whatever brand you like. Seeing as how the salt is a major ingredient, avoid iodised salt, or table salt, which will have clumping agents. It'll make the pickle taste funny.  For about 1 kg, I used around 4 TB of salt.  Toss to coat. Notice how the salt is sticking to the surface. This is because we added a tiny bit of oil to the mangoes earlier. My mum says that the oil step is necessary, else the salt won't stick, and you risk ruining your pickle.  Throw into a non-reactive box, and cover tightly with a lid. Glass is best, but I don't have a glass container that big.  Let it set for a week. Every day, open up the lid, and toss your little mangoes. I'm making a small test batch to see if I have the pickle-making hand.
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Apr 15, 2014 16:52
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| # ? Apr 20, 2024 07:36 |
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Don't mind if I dooooo
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Apr 15, 2014 17:26
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I love mango pickle with most of my heart. I always see it with lots of mustard oil and fenugreek and such - is this a completely different style, or does that get added later after the initial cure?
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Apr 16, 2014 07:29
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Fuk yeah, pikkels.
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Apr 16, 2014 08:36
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mindphlux posted:I love mango pickle with most of my heart. Nope, same thing, but that comes way way later, once the mangoes are all wrinkly and there's a bunch of water. So either you just salt them and eat them that way, or you go forward and spice them.
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Apr 16, 2014 09:32
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Is keeping the kernels in place strictly necessary? I always kind of fear getting the roof of my mouth jabbed by a piece of stabby mango stone.
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Apr 19, 2014 22:14
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Jury: the point of it is to use the teeeeeny tiny little mangoes. They should be like the size of a ping-pong ball~ish. The middles are so tender that they get pickled along with the rest with no problems. So far, my pickles are coming along rather nicely. This particular pickle's charm is that it's the whole mango being pickled. You can for sure do a version with chopped up green mango. It will be done soaking the salt through, and releasing the water within 1 day total. If you want delicious pickles NOW, you can definitely do a cut mango pickle. Just skip the oil tossing step, because the thing is being cut up, and the salt will adhere just fine. Is anyone interested in making this a general purpose Indian pickle thing? I can knock up some lemon or lime pickle too if anyone's curious. I'll just have to wait for a sale.
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Apr 20, 2014 03:44
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dino. posted:Jury: the point of it is to use the teeeeeny tiny little mangoes. They should be like the size of a ping-pong ball~ish. The middles are so tender that they get pickled along with the rest with no problems. So far, my pickles are coming along rather nicely. This particular pickle's charm is that it's the whole mango being pickled. You can for sure do a version with chopped up green mango. It will be done soaking the salt through, and releasing the water within 1 day total. If you want delicious pickles NOW, you can definitely do a cut mango pickle. Just skip the oil tossing step, because the thing is being cut up, and the salt will adhere just fine. yeah, definitely! I don't know anyone who has any experience with making indian pickles, and I'd love to see the details - so at least count me in as interested.  still excited to see the rest of the tiny mango pickle process though too!
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Apr 20, 2014 07:35
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Day 3:  Notice how the colour is no longer a bright green, but a more faded olive green. That's how you know the mango has started to give off water, and start getting preserved. I got too tempted, and wanted to make a cut mango pickle right quick. So I did. Start with the large green mangoes in your haul.  Chop them up into fine pieces. I like to do them slightly long~ish, because it's how pretty drat near everyone does it. MAKE SURE THERE IS SKIN. If you're making chopped mango pickle, make sure that each and every piece has some skin on it, or else the mango pieces will dissolve into nothingness with the long soak in salt. Add a generous bit of salt.  Look at dat salt.  Toss to coat. Toss well.  Mixed! Look at how the salt has already begun to dissolve, and the mangoes have leaked out water. Leave it for 6 - 12 hours on the counter top. It's ready to eat as early as one hour. Because of how small the mango is chopped, this is not meant for long-term storage. There's not enough salt or fat or turmeric to keep things going. If you want to make a cut mango pickle that lasts a long time, you'll want the pieces to be much larger, soak in a lot more salt, and then add spices on.
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Apr 20, 2014 11:58
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dino. posted:It's ready to eat as early as one hour. Because of how small the mango is chopped, this is not meant for long-term storage. There's not enough salt or fat or turmeric to keep things going. If you want to make a cut mango pickle that lasts a long time, you'll want the pieces to be much larger, soak in a lot more salt, and then add spices on. goddamnit dino  I demand you throw this poo poo out and start over again. I need to see the long-term storage mini-mango-pickle technique that's gonna keep in my fridge for ages
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Apr 20, 2014 16:55
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mindphlux posted:goddamnit dino I'll go over the spicing once the whole mini mangoes are salted through. They need a few more days, dude. Once they're set, I'll show how to get them preserved for a longer time, with the spices and junk. It's the same technique for all the pickles. Once you put the spices and stuff in there, you don't keep it in the fridge. They stay in the pantry just fine for years. Mum made a batch 20 years ago that's still edible. Strong as gently caress, but edible.
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Apr 20, 2014 16:57
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loving psyched for this dino, don't bother asking whether people are interested just show me how to make all the pickles
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Apr 20, 2014 17:53
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I posted in the curry thread before I saw this, but awesome. I've got some limes sitting in a sealed jar smothered in salt that I'm leaving for 3 days (some recipes are demanding a month!) and I cannot wait for phase 2 even though I'm not sure what to do because every recipe seems quite different so far... so I'm guessing this recipe will apply to my batch of limes? Excellent.
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Apr 21, 2014 21:31
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I love fermenting veggies, so I've always wanted to do Indian Pickles. I bought that crazy book from Chennai on pickling, but haven't done any of the recipes yet. I look forward to watching this thread
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Apr 23, 2014 15:47
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 I started this thread on the 15th of April, and checked the mangoes here on the 22nd of April. That's a lot of days. Whatever. Look at the really small, really wrinkly, kind of brown~ish mango. That's what we're looking for in all the mangoes. Why is all the salt gone? Because they've leaked out water. Unfortunately, these mangoes seem to be not so watery, so they're being stingy with the water.  By now, they should be like half submerged in water. Granted, part of the reason is that I spilled a bit of the water while transferring it to a larger container. Shut up, and stop judging me. Whatever. I added more salt, OK? Bear in mind that I'm using kosher salt, so it means that what looks like a lot of salt really isn't. Also bear in mind that these mangoes are whole, so the salt needs to penetrate a lot. This is how much extra salt I added:  Will check again today, and toss the mangoes around some more to distribute them around, and get them mixed into the watery part and whatnot. Note how they still look shiny. That's the initial addition of oil that's keeping the mangoes receptive to additional salt. Hooray. It's working.
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Apr 23, 2014 21:22
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I made lemon pickle in a similar way. I chopped five lemons into small-ish bits (peel still on), then threw them into an old milk bottle with a boatload of salt, a lot of hot chili powder, some methi, some asafoetida, and some fenugreek. Closed the jar, left it on a windowsill, and shook it every day. In about two weeks, it was perfect. The milk bottle was stupid, though - lemon pickle is really viscous, and it was hard to get it out of there. Also, this stuff keeps forever on the counter. There's way too much salt, and the PH is way too low for anything to grow.
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Apr 24, 2014 14:08
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Yesssss lemon pickleeeeee. That stuff is absolute magic. My mum says it's easier still if you use just the rind after you've squeezed out the juice. Not squeezed out to the point of the thing becoming a dried little lump, but enough that the seeds and juice are gone. THEN she salts it and so on. Also, free lemon juice!
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Apr 24, 2014 15:23
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Oh man I actually have some lemons I don't know what to do with! Except I'm not sure if I can use the peel, but if I can, this is happening.
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Apr 24, 2014 15:48
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My Lovely Horse posted:Oh man I actually have some lemons I don't know what to do with! Except I'm not sure if I can use the peel, but if I can, this is happening. The peel is the point of lemon pickle. It doesn't work unless you leave the rind and peel on.
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Apr 24, 2014 15:49
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Luckily they're untreated! So just chop 'em up, squeeze out seeds and juice, salt, spices, wait until they're delicious? More to the point: is it alright to let them sit without shaking for a few days? I love lemon pickle but taking proto-pickle along on my weekend trips is where I draw the line.
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Apr 24, 2014 16:33
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I like leaving the juice in, myself. And yeah, it'll be fine just leaving it for a while - I don't think the shaking is necessary, but it helps me feel like I'm more involved in the pickling process.
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Apr 24, 2014 16:44
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My Lovely Horse posted:Luckily they're untreated! So just chop 'em up, squeeze out seeds and juice, salt, spices, wait until they're delicious? More to the point: is it alright to let them sit without shaking for a few days? I love lemon pickle but taking proto-pickle along on my weekend trips is where I draw the line. If you want, you can salt it rather well, put it into a ziplock bag, and squeeze out the air. That way, the salt and the lemons are in constant contact, so gently caress shaking.
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Apr 24, 2014 20:19
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My lemon pickle ends up in a salt/lemon juice paste for all the salt I pour in the jar and  Never thought to add spices to it, though. I am going to have to play around with my next batch.
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Apr 26, 2014 07:52
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I salted the poo poo out of some lemons today. Felt vaguely uneasy until I realized it was because usually I'm doing this in the presence of tequila. Missing context.
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Apr 26, 2014 08:54
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Been a while. I left those lemons the heck alone for the past few weeks and they've become very soft. I can squeeze a piece apart with little pressure through the bag. They also smell amazingly pickle-y. These are pretty much done, right? Like if there was a failure state for this sort of thing, it'd be immediately obvious?
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May 20, 2014 20:43
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My Lovely Horse posted:Been a while. They are now done to perfection and ready to eat. If there's failure, you'd see mold all over the place.
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May 21, 2014 05:15
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My Lovely Horse posted:Been a while. you're pouring salt into an acid. it's like the thermonuclear winter of bacterial growth. you can't really preserve anything more judiciously, you should be fine. like dino says, mold is the only warning sign you need to be worried about really. I have a 2 year old running jar of preserved lemons in my fridge, I pop a new one in with some more salt every time I get near empty, and don't ever fear for my life.
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May 21, 2014 07:32
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