Indian style Lemon Pickle

Pickles are a whole integral part of Indian cuisine, albeit sometimes a bit forgotten about! Indian pickles perfectly complement many dishes – roti, rice, daal, vegetables, and curry among many others. A pickle may be sweet, sour, salty, spicy, with or without oil, or a combination of all the above. This Indian-style Lemon pickle recipe adds a sweet and sour kick to any dish. In hindi, we call it ‘nimbu achaar’ or ‘nimbu ka achaar’. While real Indian lemon pickles take up to months to prepare, this recipe doesn’t! My Instant Lemon Pickle recipe will only take you an hour of prepping and cooking, and 4 days of resting. The final result is a delicious, tangy, and zesty pickle. While it’s not the traditional process of preparing a lemon pickle, this recipe is still just as incredible!

Why should you make this Lemon pickle?

Pickles are great for your health! They offer a great source of probiotic bacteria – these are fantastic for your digestive health, and greatly help with the digestive process. Yay, gut health! People are often intimidated by Indian pickles because of their lack of familiarity with them. You truly shouldn’t be, as they are delicious and store an abundant source of minerals, antioxidants, and vitamins A and K. This recipe in particular is also rich in Vitamin C as well as is a good immunity booster. Plus you can store lemons for a long time in this way and enjoy the pickle year-round. Curious about the use and effects of turmeric? Have a look at my Turmeric and Ginger Powder recipe!

Lemon benefits for health

Indian style pickles make a great healthy addition to meals. But what about the health benefits of lemon? Well, there are plenty of those too! Lemons are a very healthy fruit. They are very rich in vitamin C – one lemon equals about 50% of your daily vitamin C intake! Citrus is also a source of antioxidants. Moreover, lemons are said to help with weight loss and digestive issues. Thus, as you can see, lemons have many healthy attributes!

For this recipe, I used organic lemons that I got from gebana. By ordering from gebana, you are guaranteed to get fairly traded, fresh, organic, and seasonal produce, all for a reasonable price! I also ordered some of their delicious pomegranates which I used to make a beautiful Pomegranate Molasses recipe.

Got a sweet tooth and extra lemons? You might want to check out my recipe for Lemon Turmeric Tartlets then!

How to prepare the Lemon Pickle?

Making this Indian-style Lemon Pickle is fairly simple. The whole process should take you about an hour of active cooking and 4 days of waiting. In short, the process goes as such: wash, dry, and slice the lemons, de-seed them, cook them with the remaining ingredients, cool them, and store them in a jar. Leave them be for 4 days, stirring once a day with a clean and dry spoon. In this way, you can already enjoy the pickle!

How is this recipe different to the traditional one?

I first learned to make this sweet and sour Lemon Pickle by watching my grandmother do it. In the traditional process, you don’t cook the lemons at all, you just clean them, cut them, and mix them with all the ingredients present in this recipe. Then you put them in a big jar and cover this jar with a muslin cloth. This jar then needs to be placed in the sun every single day for about 4 months and also stir it every day with a clean and dry spoon.

As you may understand, this recipe isn’t a traditional Indian one. It is my own recipe as I added a modern twist to it! Unfortunately, it would be very hard for me to recreate her recipe, as we live in different parts of the world and our climates vary greatly. With this Indian-style Lemon Pickle recipe, I can get a result that is very close to hers! And the added benefit is that it doesn’t take months, but only days!

Let’s talk about the ingredients.

The most important ingredient is, of course, the lemons! First of all, since you will be eating the ‘whole’ lemon with the skin, make sure that the lemons you get are organic. By choosing organic lemons, you’ll be able to ensure you aren’t eating any chemicals. Second, the best lemons to use for this recipe are ones with thinner skin. The thinner the skin, the better the lemon. With thinner skin, the lemon has a smaller white layer on the inside, which actually adds quite a bit of bitterness to the recipe. And of course, we are not looking for a bitter flavor in our pickle!

To start off, wash and dry all of your lemons, and cut them into bite-sized pieces, like shown in the picture below. Discard the lemon seeds. Further, on low to medium heat, make a simple syrup of water and sugar in a pot, and add all the spices to it.

After your spice mix is ready, it’s time to add the lemons! Turn the heat up, add the lemons, and mix them properly, so all the lemon bits are covered with the spice mixture. Allow cooking for about 7 minutes, stirring occasionally.

In a separate pan or pot, heat up your mustard or sunflower oil, and mix it with the asafoetida and the dried chilies (if using them). Unfamiliar with asafoetida? Maybe you are more familiar with its Hindi term – hing. After cooking your mix for a minute or two, take it off the heat and add it to the lemon mixture.

Take the pot off the heat and allow the mixture to completely cool. Once cooled, add it to your sterilized jars and cover with a muslin cloth, without a lid. If possible, store the jars in a sunny spot of your home!

Once a day, you should remove the muslin cloth from the jar, stir the pickle mixture completely, and then cover it again with the same cloth. It is very important that your hands and spoon are completely clean and dry. Repeat this step daily for 4 days, and that’s it – you’ve made your own Indian Lemon Pickle!