Sizzling tomato chilli pickle recipe – try it!

Here’s a recipe for all you gastronomes who like everything cooked in their own kitchens. Once you make this pickle at home, you certainly would not want to buy pickles from the market.

This is a very easy recipe – but time consuming, as all pickles are. So you could expect to spend at least 2 to 3 hours – a bit tiring but definitely worth it in the end.

Ingredients: 

1 kg tomatoes
250-300 grams fresh (big) red chillies
2 tablespoon mustard seeds
1 tablespoon fenugreek seeds
200 ml cooking oil (any vegetable oil)
A little (2 tablespoons) for sautéing the chillies

A little tamarind paste (2 tablespoons or according to taste)

Around 10-15 curry leaves (for tempering)
1 tablespoon asafoetida or hing

30 grams salt

Method: 

1. Wash the tomatoes and chillies and pat dry them with a cloth before cutting them into small pieces.
2. Take the chillies in a cauldron or kadai and sauté them until they are soft and start losing colour. Then keep them aside.
3. In the same cauldron (kadai), now cook the tomatoes but do not add any more oil – the tomatoes should cook in their own juices. Also add the tamarind paste to it while it cooks.
4. Meanwhile take 1 tablespoon mustard seeds along with 1 tablespoon fenugreek seeds, roast them and then powder them in the grinder.
5. Also, puree the red chillies separately in the mixer while tomatoes are getting cooked.
6. After 15-20 minutes, once all the tomatoes are cooked and soft, take them and cool them down, and then puree them in the mixer as well.
7. Now take the same cauldron, add both the chillies puree and the tomatoes puree in it, mix the mustard and fenugreek powder you made earlier. Now put this on the gas and let it cook. You have to keep stirring the mixture with a ladle or a spoon so it doesn’t stick to the bottom of the kadai.
8. After about 15-20 minutes of cooking the mixture, add tempering to it. For this, take the 200 ml oil in a separate pan and heat it; add 1 to 1 and a half tablespoon mustard seeds to it along with 1 tablespoon asafoetida and the curry leaves. When the curry leaves and mustard seeds splutter, add the entire mixture to the main cauldron where your chillies and tomatoes are boiling.
9. Now every 5 minutes, vigourously stir this entire mixture with a spoon so it does not stick to the bottom of your kadai. Cook for around 15-20 minutes, until the oil comes to the top of the mixture, which is a sign that your pickle is ready. At this stage, you can add salt and stir it again.
10. Now, keep your cauldron under the fan to cool it down, put it into bottles and once the pickle has cooled down completely, store it in the fridge.

Voila! Your pickle is ready to eat! It can accompany every meal from the simple dal chaawal to the more elaborate lunch you cook for friends. You can even keep it for gifting to friends as there is nothing better than homemade pickle to make your best friend’s day!

Recipe courtesy: Arunima Hoskote and Gurdeep Kaur