Where to Start with Karen Solomon
Karen Solomon is a San Francisco-based food writer, preservation teacher, and culinary tour guide who has spent over a decade exploring the intersection of food craft and cultural tradition. She first fell in love with pickling and home cooking while teaching English in Japan, where she immersed herself in the simplicity and satisfaction of Japanese home cooking. That experience shaped everything she has written since. Her books range from broad introductions to food crafting (“Jam It, Pickle It, Cure It”) to deep dives into specific preservation traditions (“Asian Pickles” and “Cured Meat, Smoked Fish & Pickled Eggs”). What sets Solomon apart is her ability to make unfamiliar techniques feel approachable, drawing on Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Indian, and Southeast Asian traditions without flattening their differences. She is a frequent instructor of canning, pickling, and fermentation classes, and her recipes have appeared in Saveur, Fine Cooking, and Food52.
Start here
Asian Pickles
Karen Solomon · 208 pages · 2014 · Easy
Themes: pickling, fermentation, Asian cuisine, kimchi, tsukemono, international techniques
A comprehensive guide to pickling traditions from Korea, Japan, China, India, Vietnam, and beyond, with more than 75 recipes that range from quick refrigerator pickles to long-fermented staples like kimchi and umeboshi.
Why Start Here
This is Solomon’s most distinctive and rewarding book, the one that brings together everything she learned traveling through Asia and years of teaching preservation classes in San Francisco. Most Western pickling books treat Asian pickles as an afterthought, maybe a chapter on kimchi tucked at the end. Solomon puts these traditions at the center, giving each country’s methods the space and respect they deserve.
The recipes are organized by country and technique, so you can explore Korean kimchi and banchan, Japanese tsukemono and nukazuke, Chinese preserved vegetables, Indian achars and chutneys, and Southeast Asian pickled fruits. Each section opens with enough cultural context to understand why the pickle matters in its home cuisine, without becoming a textbook. The instructions are clear and forgiving, designed for home cooks who may be encountering these techniques for the first time.
What makes this book particularly useful is Solomon’s practical sense. She notes which pickles are ready in hours and which take weeks. She explains the science of fermentation in plain language: why salt draws moisture from vegetables, how lactic acid bacteria create sour flavors, and what signs tell you a ferment has gone wrong. Whether you want to make a batch of quick Vietnamese daikon pickles for banh mi or commit to a full crock of traditional napa cabbage kimchi, the path is laid out clearly.
What to Expect
A 208-page hardcover that is part cookbook, part cultural tour. The tone is warm and enthusiastic without being overwhelming. Recipes assume no prior pickling experience, and most require only basic kitchen equipment. Expect to discover dozens of pickles you have never encountered before, and to realize how much of Asian cooking depends on these fermented and brined accompaniments.
Alternatives
Karen Solomon · 224 pages · 2018 · Moderate
A hands-on guide to preserving proteins at home, covering salt-curing, smoking, pickling, oil-curing, and dehydrating techniques applied to meat, fish, eggs, and dairy. Includes 56 recipes ranging from beef jerky (eight varieties) to duck breast prosciutto, smoked salmon, brined cheese, and pickled eggs.
Why This One
If “Asian Pickles” covers the vegetable side of preservation, this book tackles the protein side. Solomon brings the same clear, technique-first approach to a set of skills that can feel intimidating. Curing meat and smoking fish sound like they require specialized equipment and years of experience, but Solomon breaks each process into manageable steps and explains exactly what is happening at a chemical level as salt, smoke, and acid transform raw ingredients into something shelf-stable and deeply flavored.
The range is what makes this book valuable. You can start with something simple, like pickled eggs or basic beef jerky, and work your way up to duck prosciutto or gravlax. Each recipe includes timing, temperature guidance, and clear indicators for when something is done. Solomon also covers safety thoroughly, explaining the risks of improper curing without making the whole process feel dangerous.
What to Expect
A 224-page paperback with practical instructions and full-color photography. The tone is encouraging and knowledgeable. Some recipes require only a few hours, while others need days or weeks of curing time. Basic kitchen equipment is sufficient for most projects, though a few recipes benefit from a smoker. A good next step after mastering vegetable pickling and fermentation.