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Fruits & Roots

My Easy Homemade Dill Pickle Spice Blend Recipe

This homemade dill pickle spice blend is the perfect, balanced mix for wild fermenting cucumbers into delicious and flavorful dill pickles.

Prep: 10 minutes
Total: 10 minutes
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Recipe Index | Ferment | Fruits & Roots

My Easy Homemade Dill Pickle Spice Blend Recipe

This homemade dill pickle spice blend is the perfect, balanced mix for wild fermenting cucumbers into delicious and flavorful dill pickles.

The Perfect Dill Pickle Spice Blend

I created this dill pickle spice blend back in 2015. I worked at a local spice shop and loved taking home individual spices to see what worked well in wild fermentation recipes.

Some spices can be unappetizing when fermented, so getting the blend right took some work. After many trials and errors, I created this blend of spices, perfect for enhancing the flavor of wild-fermented pickles.

Here are all of the dried spices you will need (I like to buy all of my spices in bulk, fair-trade organic):

  • Green peppercorns
  • Roasted garlic granules
  • Brown mustard seed
  • Yellow mustard seed
  • Coriander
  • Dill weed

How to Make Your Own Dill Pickle Spice Blend at Home

Making spice blends at home is SO easy and much more affordable than buying blended spices. I usually make enough of this spice blend to fill up a 16-ounce mason jar.

No need to worry about how long it will keep. It will last a long time if you store it in a mason jar or weck jar with a good sealing lid. So, you can make a huge batch of the spice blend and store it for an extended period. This is especially useful if you plan to make pickles regularly.

When making a spice blend like this at home, it’s best to use weight measurements. So I’ve made this recipe with gram units. You need a simple kitchen scale to weigh out each ingredient before mixing.

dill pickle spice blend in a wooden spoon on a white marble counter. some of the spices are spilling out of the spoon onto the counter.

Learn How to Make Fermented Pickles at Home

CLICK HERE for my easy fermented dill pickle recipe. If you have been a Cultured Guru Fermented Foods customer in the past, use our fermented dill pickle recipe with this spice blend, and you’ll have our signature pickles at home for a tiny fraction of the cost! Yay!

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Fruits & Roots

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My Easy Homemade Dill Pickle Spice Blend Recipe

If you are going to make delicious fermented dill pickles, you need the right spice blend! This homemade dill pickle spice blend is the perfect, balanced mix for wild fermenting cucumbers into dill pickles. You can use this spice blend for canning and pickling recipes too.

  • Prep: 10 minutes
  • Total Time: 10 minutes

Ingredients

  • 15 grams peppercorns
  • 15 grams dried garlic granules
  • 15 grams brown mustard seeds
  • 15 grams yellow mustard seeds
  • 8 grams coriander seed
  • 8 grams dried dill weed

Instructions

  1. Measure out all of the ingredients. 
  2. Combine all of the ingredients in a bowl. 
  3. Mix until even.
  4. Store in an airtight container. 

Notes

  • Use two teaspoons of spice blend per quart of fermented pickles

Did you make this recipe?

Please leave a 5-star review below if you loved it! Tag @cultured.guru on Instagram

 

Nutrition information is auto-calculated and estimated as close as possible. We are not responsible for any errors. We have tested the recipe for accuracy, but your results may vary.

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Kaitlynn Fenley Author, Educator, Food Microbiologist
Kaitlynn is a food microbiologist and fermentation expert teaching people how to ferment foods and drinks at home.
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hey i’m kaitlynn, i’m a microbiologist and together with my husband jon we are cultured guru.

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  1. Dee
    06|06|2022

    Hello,
    Do you use ground coriander or coriander seed?
    Thanks!

    Reply
    1. Kaitlynn Fenley
      06|07|2022

      whole coriander seed

      Reply
  2. Dee
    06|06|2022

    Also, dried dill seed or weed?
    And in the picture did you grind the ingredients or which ingredient is the finer parts in the picture? Thanks!

    Reply
    1. Kaitlynn Fenley
      06|07|2022

      I use dried dill weed, but dill seed can work too. And no, I do not grind the ingredients. The finer bits are dill weed and granulated garlic.

      Reply
  3. Debbie Cobb
    08|11|2022

    I water bath can my dill pickles will this blend work for that type of canning?

    Reply
    1. Kaitlynn Fenley
      08|15|2022

      I think so, as long as you follow all the other canning steps. I suggest using only a little bit of spice in the canning recipe… Like 1/4 a teaspoon. The heating process can intensify the flavor of the spices so you don’t need much.

      Reply
      1. Keith
        08|26|2023

        I’d like to add fresh garlic in lieu of the granules. Yea or nay and why or why not?

        Reply
        1. Kaitlynn Fenley
          08|28|2023

          You can do that! You can’t put fresh garlic in the spice blend, but you can put fresh garlic in a jar of pickles.

          Reply
  4. Kristy
    08|09|2023

    Is yellow mustard power instead of seed ok?

    Reply
    1. Kaitlynn Fenley
      08|10|2023

      Should be, but the powder in pickles will make the brine extra cloudy.

      Reply
  5. Chris
    06|29|2024

    I’d love to know about the unappetising spices, so I can avoid them in my fermentation experiments.

    Reply

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probiotic pickled garlic 🧄 

People always wonder probiotic pickled garlic 🧄 

People always wonder why I add water to my sauerkraut recipes. While the main reason is recipe standardization to account for seasonal and regional variations in cabbage water density, the more simple answer is that extra brine is better than too little!

I especially love love love using extra sauerkraut brine to create more medicinal, probiotic foods. Like this probiotic pickled garlic!

Heirloom culturing, the technique used in this recipe, is my favorite way to use left over fermented vegetable brine. It’s kinda like fridge pickling, but with more microbes. 

Get my probiotic pickled garlic recipe from our recipe index, linked in my profile. You can also learn this technique in our Fermented Foods Semester online course!
#garlic
This earthy, tart, and naturally effervescent booc This earthy, tart, and naturally effervescent booch is rich in probiotics and health benefits. So you should make some to share with friends and family around the table next week! 🫧✨🥂

It’s extra fizzy too, thanks to the high levels of the FODMAP fructan in beet juice. The microbes metabolize the fructans to make the bubbles, so fermented beet juice kombucha is much lower in FODMAPs than plain beet juice! 

You can try the recipe by visiting the recipe index linked in my bio. #kombucha
Yes, they smell like farts. YES you should still m Yes, they smell like farts. YES you should still make them, because the fart smell is a really good indicator that the microbes are making the beneficial compounds in the Brussels sprouts more bioavailable. ✨🫧

Get the recipe on my website https://cultured.guru
is this rage bait? 🤠 #kombucha is this rage bait? 🤠

#kombucha
I decided to try using my sourdough discard with t I decided to try using my sourdough discard with this packaged brownie mix and left over s’mores stuff from our latest camping trip!

Sourdough starter makes brownies a little more cake-like, so I had to up the fats in the recipe a bit to keep them moist and used a combo of brown butter and oil. 

Get the recipe for these moist cakey sourdough s’mores brownies on my website, and let me know if you try it!

My recipe index is linked in my bio. https://cultured.guru/blog/brown-butter-sourdough-smores-brownies-from-box-mix
Fermented garlic honey, and I make mine as an oxym Fermented garlic honey, and I make mine as an oxymel 

🍯✨🫧🧄 the recipe is on my website!
https://cultured.guru

Many historical texts mention the use of both garlic and honey in traditional medicine. Still, none explicitly describe the modern method of combining only these two ingredients and leaving them to ferment. In all my readings on fermentation history, I’ve never come across any historical descriptions of fermented garlic honey, made with only garlic and honey.

However, I did come across many accounts of over 1,200 types of oxymel in Ancient Greece and Persia, many of which include garlic.The ancient Greeks and Persians used oxymels to extract and preserve potent herbs, including garlic. Oxymel is an ancient preparation, and Hippocrates wrote records about its benefits around 400 B.C.E. in On Regimen in Acute Diseases.

The thing to note here is that oxymel uses a combination of honey and raw vinegar.

When we make fermented garlic honey as an oxymel, the pH starts at a safe acidity and remains at a safe acidity (below 4.6). This is because the microbes in raw vinegar (or raw kombucha) ensure the honey is metabolized into more acids. These microbes “eat” sugars similarly to the way they do when making kombucha, wild mead, and vinegar. When we add raw vinegar or raw kombucha to a garlic honey oxymel, we are guaranteeing the presence of many acid-producing microbes that keep the mixture acidic and safe.

PSA: I’m not saying that your garlic honey made without raw vinegar is destined to have botulism. But I am saying without raw vinegar/kombucha it is a concern, and it can happen. I am saying that I’m not comfortable making it without raw vinegar/kombucha. 

I have compiled all my thoughts on garlic honey and botulism in the blog post, linked in my bio! You can also type “cultured.guru” right into your web browser and the recipe blog is on my homepage. 

#garlic #honey
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