Pickle and Preserve

This spicy Yemeni cilantro sauce is fiery hot with chile peppers, but it is also aromatic with spices and herbaceous notes of cilantro and parsley.

This Vietnamese chili jam is sweet and slightly spicy, and it is especially delicious with noodle dishes.

The rice dish pongal is very dear to Tamil people. This combination isn’t traditional, but the thing is, pongal is just fantastic with bright Sri Lankan pickles and a soft-boiled egg.

These pickled pumpkin balls are a sweet, tangy condiment to go with all of the savory, meaty, roasted flavors on your Thanksgiving dinner table.

These dill seed–scented pickles would be a great snack at any point in the year, but the recipe stands the test of time as a Thanksgiving appetizer.

You can think of this cucumber salad as a spin on homemade dill pickles. It gives you a bit of that flavor without much time or effort.

These jammy eggs are a quick and beautiful addition to any cocktail party.

Rumtopf is a traditional German tipple that you build over the course of the entire harvest season.

Don't throw away your watermelon rinds. Turn them into these sweetly sour preserves, which are a perfect accompaniment to roasted meats, cheese plates, and more.

These turmeric-spiced pumpkin falafels come together in a food processor, then roast in the oven to golden-brown perfection. A punchy carrot slaw keeps things bright.

Quick pickled vegetables are welcomed any time of the year. Use fresh produce like cauliflower, carrots, radish, radish pods, or raw turmeric for this preparation.

Canning and preserving have long been an essential tactic of survival, and chowchow is a condiment born of both ingenuity and necessity. Here, green tomatoes not yet ripe enough to eat are transformed into a bright pickled expression of the first days of summer. It has been said that chowchow began as a collection of remnant produce that couldn’t be used in other dishes, so it became its own reclaimed relish. As you chop each vegetable, consider that origin: making the most from the least, creating abundance from scarcity. You can use four heatproof glass pint jars for this, though I prefer eight 8-ounce jars instead so I can share it around. Using pickling salt, such as Morton Canning & Pickling Salt, helps the liquid stay clear and keeps the cabbage from turning brown.

This pickle brine–inspired dry rub turns potatoes and carrots crispy-creamy with pleasantly sharp vinegary tang. Toss them, still warm, with leftover shredded chicken and crunchy raw celery, onion, and yes, sliced pickles for a double-the-pickle, double-the-fun dinner salad.

The power of a tangy, vinegary brine, but in powdered form. This spice rub brightens and invigorates roasted chicken, seared fish and shines when sprinkled over vegetables before roasting. The cornstarch in the vinegar powder helps form an extra-crispy, extra-tart crust on anything you put it on.

Poke—the Hawaiian dish of marinated fish served over rice—goes veggie-centric in this bowl of marinated beets, popular at José Andrés's Beefsteak restaurant.

Radishes, contrastingly crunchy and peppery to tender and sweet pears, take rather well to modern pickling, the sort that is less about preserving and more about making something to shake other flavors from their shyness.

Crisp pickled vegetables go brilliantly with cocktails (or with sandwiches, a hunk of cheese, a juicy steak...the possibilities are endless). Fresh ginger and dried chiles give them a bracing boost and orange juice plays up their natural sweetness.

You can store this all-purpose sweet-and-spicy vinegar in clean mason jars, but it is easier to keep it in repurposed glass bottles. Note that this recipe can be adjusted as you like—try using different chiles or other spices like bay leaf.

Use this fruit compote to fill pastries, spoon over ice cream, or mix into smoothies.

This technique is nothing short of amazing—even if you're finicky about your pickles.

Mustard seeds that have been plumped in a pickle brine can really make a dish. They provide texture and crunch, heat and sweetness.

This pickled shrimp recipe is perfect for a special occasion—perhaps as one part of an hors d'oeuvres spread at Thanksgiving, Christmas, or New Year's Eve. The tangy pickled shrimp can be prepared in 45 minutes or less, though they require a bit of additional unattended time.

This retro-style platter of pickled vegetables and crudités makes a refreshing addition to a decadent holiday dinner table.

Adding olive oil to this hot sauce recipe lends it body and mellows some of the heat.