Asian Pickles

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.