Home Food & Nutrition 36 Sweet, Spicy, and Sour Pickle Recipes

Food & Nutrition

36 Sweet, Spicy, and Sour Pickle Recipes

February 10, 2025

The world of pickles is so much more vast than that staple jar of dill pickles in your fridge. In addition to those beloved cucumbers, pickling is a terrific way to enjoy all kinds of vegetables — and even some fruits! Quick-pickling doesn’t require a lot of time, effort, equipment, or expertise, and the payoff is big. Spend a few minutes chopping produce and mixing up your brine and voilà! You’ll have a tasty condiment to take salads, sandwiches, cheese spreads, and myriad other dishes to delicious new heights. From carrots to cauliflower and blackberries to beets, get out your Mason jars and peruse our collection of pickle recipes.

Dill Pickles

Julia Hartbeck

Bobby Flay’s incredibly simple recipe yields exactly what you want in this classic pickle: the perfect balance of garlic and dill with an intense crunch.

Pickled Snack Peppers

Victor Protasio / Food Styling by Chelsea Zimmer / Prop Styling by Claire Spollen

Thinly slice and pickle sweet mini peppers in a simple solution of white wine vinegar, sugar, salt, and water. The peppers retain their brilliant colors to brighten any table.

Pickled Ramps

Photo by Huge Galdones / Food Styling by Christina Zerkis

Pickling ramps is a terrific way to extend their fleeting season — they can be chopped and added to a salad, pasta, or pesto, or featured on a cheese and charcuterie platter.

Amba (Pickled Mango Sauce)

Photo by Kelsey Hansen / Food Styling by Greg Luna / Prop Styling by Stephanie Hunter

Lucy Simon’s funky pickled mango sauce employs unripe green mango, white vinegar, and spices like fenugreek, cumin, and tart sumac for a versatile condiment that comes together quickly in the blender.

Quick Pickled Pearl Onions

Matt Taylor-Gross / Food Styling by Barrett Washburne

Thomas Keller’s pickled pearl onions only require an hour in a red wine vinegar brine. Mustard seeds, coriander seeds, and black peppercorns impart a lovely flavor that makes these tangy onions well-suited for accompanying rich roasted meats.

Pickled Carrots

Photo by Greg DuPree / Food Styling by Micah Morton / Prop Styling by Audrey Davis

With a gentle Champagne vinegar base and judicious amounts of grated jalapeño, ginger, and garlic, these pickled carrot slices add a little punch and crunch to any dish you add them to.

Danmuji (Golden Radish and Beet Pickle)

Jennifer Causey / Food Styling by Chelsea Zimmer / Prop Styling by Christine Keely

Danmuji, a sweet yellow radish pickle, is commonly served in Korean-Chinese cuisine. Chef Sunny Lee forgoes the usual drying and fermentation steps to deliver a quick, turmeric-stained pickle with notes of ginger and black pepper.

Pickled Red Onions

Matt Taylor-Gross / Food Styling by Barrett Washburne

Spiced with cloves, allspice, bay leaves, black peppercorns, and yellow mustard seeds, these quick-pickled magenta onions are ideal for delivering a sweet tang to all kinds of dishes.

Namasu

Photo by Victor Protasio / Food Styling by Torie Cox / Prop Styling by Audrey Davis

Pickle delicately sliced vegetables with rice vinegar for namasu, a ritual from a Japanese monastery. Shinobu Namae lightens this version with floral, sweet, acidic yuzu juice.

Refrigerator Pickled Peppers

Photo by Greg DuPree / Food Styling by Chelsea Zimmer / Prop Styling by Claire Spollen

Use whatever combination of hot and sweet peppers you’d like for this fun, easy recipe. By layering the pepper slices into the jar first and then pouring the hot pickling brine over the top, you use only enough liquid to submerge the slices and end up with a jar packed to the brim with delicious pickled peppers.

Lemon-Okra Pickles

Lemon zest and fresh oregano add bright, earthy notes to this garlicky pickled okra. The brine starts with white wine vinegar for a gentle tang.

Spiced Pickled Beets

Chef Martha Wiggins of Café Reconcile pickles beets with warm spices like cinnamon, allspice, and cloves, as well as bay leaves and black peppercorns. Make a batch — they’re an ideal cocktail snack.

Spicy Dill Quick Pickles

For these zingy choose-your-own-adventure pickles, you can use any combination of veggies and hot chiles you’d like. The recipe makes enough brine to fill two 1-quart jars.

Pickled Garlicky Spaghetti Squash

Photo by Jennifer Causey / Food Styling by Chelsea Zimmer / Prop Styling by Christina Daley

Essenced with the classic combination of rosemary and thyme, plus a bit of garlic and the fruitiness of Fresno chile, savory strands of quick-pickled spaghetti squash retain their pleasant crunch, making them equally wonderful on a cheeseboard or as a sandwich topper.

Bloody Mary–Pickled Green Beans

Justin Chapple’s fantastic Bloody Mary brine is made with tomato juice, vinegar, horseradish, peppercorns, and garlic. The green beans are tasty on their own, but are especially delicious served with an actual Bloody Mary.

Traditional Napa Cabbage Kimchi

Instead of being brined in vinegar, kimchi is salt-brined, which creates lactic acid in a process called lacto-fermentation. Marja and Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s classic recipe includes napa cabbage, ginger, and garlic that’s been fermented for three full days.

Cauliflower-Heart Pickles

Philadelphia chef Michael Solomonov’s cauliflower pickles reflect his zero-waste approach in the kitchen. Since he uses the florets for other dishes, this recipe utilizes just the cauliflower hearts, as well celery and carrots. Allow the vegetables to brine overnight in the fridge before serving.

Spiced and Pickled Blackberries

Steven Satterfield’s tart, aromatic blackberries are brined in a base of red wine vinegar spiced with black peppercorns, allspice, juniper berries, fresh ginger, and a bay leaf. They make a gorgeous addition to salads.

Crisp Pickled Vegetables

Chef Adam Perry Lang combines cauliflower, carrots, fennel bulb, red pepper, zucchini, and yellow wax beans for his festive medley of pickled veggies. Dried guajillo chiles provide a hint of spice.

Sweet Cauliflower and Carrot Pickles

Chef Naomi Pomeroy’s warmly spiced sweet pickles are marinated in a blend of white balsamic and white wine vinegars, plus an unexpected ingredient: Cointreau. The recipe calls for a cup and a half of sugar, but feel free to sub some of that out for honey, as Pomeroy sometimes did.

Quick-Pickled Sweet Cucumbers

If you’re a fan of standard sweet cucumber pickles, this recipe is for you. It requires just 15 minutes of prep — we like to use Kirby, Persian, or English cucumbers here.

Sweet and Spicy Pickled Okra

Jalapeños, pickled piquantés (aka Peppadews), and dried red chiles add a burst of heat to these okra pickles, which gets balanced out by a fair amount of sugar in the apple cider vinegar brine.

Pikliz (Haitian Spicy Pickled Cabbage)

For this staple Haitian condiment, a mixture of vibrant carrot, cabbage, and onion picks up a magenta hue after a day’s soak in vinegar, lime, and hot chiles. The flavor will deepen the longer it marinates, and the vegetables retain their crisp bite.

Turnip Kimchi

Chef Andrea Reusing’s turnip kimchi forgoes the red chile flakes, instead using only a single seeded serrano pepper for a mere hint of heat. The kimchi ferments for just a couple of days, yielding a less sour pickle that highlights the flavor of the vegetable.

Sweet-Spiced Pickles

Instead of cutting them into slices or spears, cooking teacher Tara Stevens uses a vegetable peeler to shave her carrots into elegant ribbons. The recipe relies simply on sherry vinegar, salt, sugar, and a bit of Fresno chile for flavor.

Spicy Quick-Pickled Radishes

It takes only 15 minutes and a handful of ingredients to make these zesty pickled radishes, which are a great foil for rich dishes such as pâté or rillettes.

Salty-Sweet Spiced Pickled Plums

Chef Minh Phan pickles fresh plums in a salty-sweet spiced brine to approximate the flavors of li hing mui — salty-sweet dried plums that are a popular snack in China and Hawaii.

Superfast Salt-and-Sugar Pickles

David Chang uses just a teaspoon each of salt and sugar for these vibrant, crunchy pickles that are ready in only half an hour,

Bread-and-Butter Zucchini Pickles

When your garden just won’t quit and you’ve made all the zucchini bread you can handle, turn to this easy recipe. The pickles get their brilliant yellow color from the addition of turmeric in the brine.

Cider-Vinegar-Pickled Beets

If you’re looking for a solid recipe for simple, savory pickled beets, this one from James Beard Award-winning chef John Currence will do the trick. Let them stand at room temperature for four hours or refrigerate overnight before serving.

Pickled Garden Vegetables

There are no spices in this crunchy blend of carrots, radishes, and cucumbers; instead, porcini mushroom broth is added to the cider vinegar-based brine for an earthy depth of flavor.

Hot Pickled Okra

Made with nine dried red chiles plus three fresh jalapeños, these spicy okra pickles bring the heat. Feel free to add dried chile flakes to escalate the fiery factor.

Pickled Farm-Stand Tomatoes with Jalapeños

These are the pickles to make when summer’s tomato bounty is in full swing, The tomato juices mingle with rice vinegar, ginger, garlic, a touch of brown sugar, and a whole host of spices for a flavor-packed brine that’s worthy of sopping up with crusty bread. Seeding the jalapeños keeps the heat level relatively mild.

Pickled Jerusalem Artichokes

Also called sunchokes, these pickled Jerusalem artichokes from chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten are brined in Champagne vinegar infused with warm spices like cardamom, cloves, and star anise. Use your mandoline to thinly slice the vegetables.

Taiwanese Sesame Cucumbers

Ready to eat in just 25 minutes, Joanne Chang’s quick-pickled cucumbers are tossed in a fragrant blend of toasted sesame oil and rice vinegar.

Pickled Shallots

Chef Hugh Acheson’s pickled shallots require just four ingredients and 10 minutes to prepare. They can be stashed in the fridge up to two weeks and make an especially tasty addition to salads and sandwiches.

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