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  • RecipesWe love to create delicious recipes with gut health in mind. By using our recipes, you can easily create any dish knowing that it’s good for gut health! Our recipe blog also includes Vegan Recipes, Vegetarian Recipes, Gluten Free Recipes, and Paleo Recipes.
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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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Healthy poop potion? I really do think my gut is Healthy poop potion?

I really do think my gut is loving this sauerkraut because of the celeriac (celery root), and I don’t have a science based reason for why. I saw this celery root in the store and had a gut feeling that I should make sauerkraut with it, and that’s how we got here. I guess my microbiome knew what it wanted!

Type “root vegetable sauerkraut -ai” into google and you’ll see my recipe! It’s also on my website homepage, also linked in my bio, and if you’re seeing this on Facebook, link is in the comments. Enjoy!  #sauerkraut
A lot of people think vinegar kills all microbes b A lot of people think vinegar kills all microbes because shelf stable pickles do not contain microbes. But with shelf stable pickles, it’s the pasteurization/sterilization via hot water bath or pressure canning that makes shelf stable pickles free of microbes.

Hot hot hot acid in a pressurized environment does kill, well…most microbes. 

Think about “refrigerator pickle” recipes, though. They need to be stored in the refrigerator because vinegar alone doesn’t stop fermentation.

Fridge pickles are made without pasteurization/sterilization (canning) so they will wild ferment without refrigeration, and not necessarily in a good way because there’s not enough salt. 

All vinegar is made via fermentation too, and vinegar fermentation involves acetic acid bacteria, but also a ton of LAB, mainly Lactobacillus, Pediococcus, and Leuconostoc (the same genera you’d find in fermented veg.)  I linked a reference paper in my fermented mushroom recipe blog, so you all can read about the LAB involved in vinegar fermentation. 

Try 🍄‍🟫googlin’🍄‍🟫“fermented mushrooms” and you’ll see my recipe, it’s the first result (usually) 🤗

#mushrooms #fermentation
I will not ever wild lacto ferment just beets agai I will not ever wild lacto ferment just beets again lol. Mixing with cabbage for beet sauerkraut is the best though! 

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Cabbage and the cabbage microbiome offer a lot to balance out beets in fermentation, and I think mixing into a sauerkraut is the only way to go for lacto fermenting beets! 

Try googlin’ “beet and red cabbage sauerkraut” and you’ll see my recipe, I’m Cultured Guru.
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