I used up some of my bargain car boot sale limes on making lime chutney, but have been searching for a spicier Indian style lime pickle recipe. The problem I've been coming up with is that most of the recipes involve leaving the pickle in full sunlight for several days, fine if you live on the Indian sub-continent, but a bit more difficult during your typical English summer.

In the end I had to go with one just to try it out, this is an interesting recipe as far a pickling goes in that it doesn't contain vinegar or oil, the preserving is presumably done with a combination of the acidic lime juice, salt and sugar. I'm still looking for a recipe for an oil based lime pickle as I still have a few limes left (now safely stored in the freezer)

See here for the lime pickle recipe.

Recipe Costs

£0.32 1kg (about 16) limes (or £2.56 if buying from tesco)
£ 0.04 100g salt
£0.47 500g sugar
£0.26 1 teaspoon cardamom seeds (ground)
£0.12 2 teaspoons cumin seeds (ground)
£0.10 Half a teaspoon cloves (ground)
£0.03 Chilli powder as per taste required
£0.75 75 g of grated ginger root
£0.03 1 teaspoon Fenugreek (methi seeds)
£0.03 1 teaspoon Mustard seeds
£2.15 Total (or £4.39 if buying limes from tesco)
£4.09 per kg of chutney - about the same as the equivalent at tesco (£8.28 with buying full price limes - nearly twice the cost of equivalent at tesco)

Salting the limes brought out a fair amount of juice.

The remaining juice is then squeezed out.

Seeds ready for grinding in my favorite pestle and morter, I didn't grind these to a powder as I don't mind a bit of texture in the chutney.

All the ingredients are mixed together and boiled for a minute, the limes are still quite hard when packed into the sterilised jars, or in this case jar, as it was reasonably large. There was a lot of surplus liquid once the jar had been topped up.

Amazing that 16 limes can be packed into one jar, this was then left on a sunny window sill for a couple of weeks, hopefully this will replicate the Indian sun.

Recipe Timings

30 mins preparation
10 mins simmering
5 mins potting

Taste Test

I left these for around 10 months before opening, and the first thing I noticed was that they were dryer than shop bought pickles. When making these again I will probably not pack the fruit in so tight so as to allow a it more room for some of the surplus liquid.
The texture however is spot on, just firm enough to provide some bite, without being overly chewy. The sour lime flavour comes through very well, more so than the spices. Next time I'll try increasing the quantities of the spices, especially the chilli powder as I prefer my lime pickle to have a little more of a kick.