7 ms·

Ah, the "achaar". So wrongly translated as "pickle". In my village (Ganges plain, North India), making achaar was a significant seasonal community event. When

Ah, the "achaar". So wrongly translated as "pickle". In my village (Ganges plain, North India), making achaar was a significant seasonal community event. When mangoes were small, we used to wait for heavy winds during early monsoon. A lot of raw mangoes would fall on the ground, and the next day they would be sold at a much cheaper price. There were two broad classes of mango varieties: one for eating ripe, and the other one for making achaar, which were usually very small, had large seeds, and were extremely sour when raw (and extremely sweet and full of fibers when ripe). The whole process would take a week or two: cutting raw mangoes, drying them, salting them, preparing masala, and putting them in a special jar. The last process requires special hands if you wanted your pickle to last a few years. There were a few women who were experts in putting pickle in jar and were highly sought after. Whoever had pickle that could last at least two years in the village without growing fungus belonged to this group. Some members of this famous group were from lower castes, and obviously, they were not allowed to physically touch the pickle. Instead, they would supervise from a very close distance. They would take a few pieces of mango mixed with masala and push them down the jar as hard as possible to remove all air. The slower and harder you push, the better. Once the jar was almost filled, it would be filled with mustard oil and crystal salt and then kept for at least 6 months. The older the pickle, the better it is! The achaar jar used to be the costliest pot in a house, usually a china pot. My contribution to this was introducing potassium permanganate as an extra layer to fight fungus. It is still known as "achaar powder" in the village. Things are very different now. The moisture content in new brick-concrete houses is not as high as it used to be in traditionally made houses. And much better quality jars are available, especially the airtight ones. I don't think many people now push the achaar as hard as they used to.

hawk_ 3y ago
> The last process requires special hands if you wanted your pickle to last a few years. Is that some code word for hygiene? I seem to remember that the concept of hygiene for making achaar (and for other kitchen matters) was codified in religious practices in my family/community.
- boruto 3y ago
  Don't really think that is the case.
- civilitty 3y ago
  No it’s technique. There are two ways to pickle something - hot and cold. The hot method uses boiling liquid that sterilizes the container by itself but the cold method requires careful technique that keeps the container sterile until the food is loaded. Hygiene matters but only incidentally, since it’s easier to keep one’s work area clean when they are clean.
- kumarvvr 3y ago
  I have observed this personally in my extended family. My paternal grandmother has 3 daughters. GM and Daughter 1's pickles would last long and were delicious. Daughter 2 and 3's pickles would not be good and spoil. But, the process, and I mean, like an industrial quality detailed process of pages and pages of notes and quantities, etc would be absolutely same. My GM always said 2 & 3 dont have the 'hand' for a pickle. Fun Memory : One of my grandmother most precious possessions was not gold or money, but a 40 year old aluminum tumbler, passed on to her by her mother-in-law, that was used to measure items for the pickle (x tumblers of mustard powder, Y tumblers of chilli powder..)
- satvikpendem 3y ago
  It's probably more of a code word for experience and luck, like a gardener's green thumb; some have it, some simply don't, is the implication.
  - lazide 3y ago
    Also it could be body biome related.
NL807 3y ago
I would love to learn how to make this. Do you or anyone here know good recipes and the process?
- rmk 3y ago
  You could buy a pickle spice mix (this one is a North Indian style pickle mix, by the looks of it): https://foodsofnations.com/products/indian-pickle-masala-achar-masala?_pos=1&_sid=365033785&_ss=r https://foodsofnations.com/products/indian-pickle-masala-ach... Here's a 'wet kind' to make Gujarati style pickles: https://www.tarladalal.com/homemade-indian-pickle-masala-gujarati-achar-masala-3439r https://www.tarladalal.com/homemade-indian-pickle-masala-guj... Here's a recipe to make mango pickle (this being the tail end of summer, you may chance upon raw mangoes still): https://www.tarladalal.com/spicy-mango-pickle-mango-pickle-with-mustard-oil-3403r https://www.tarladalal.com/spicy-mango-pickle-mango-pickle-w... Or try pickling lemons, which are easily available year-round: https://www.tarladalal.com/sweet-lemon-pickle-nimboo-ka-achar-no-oil-lemon-pickle-3420r https://www.tarladalal.com/sweet-lemon-pickle-nimboo-ka-acha... https://profusioncurry.com/sweet-lemon-pickle-recipe/#recipe https://profusioncurry.com/sweet-lemon-pickle-recipe/#recipe
- phanimahesh 3y ago
  Raw sour mangoes, chopped to eighths, with the seed taken out. (hard shell covering the seed is fine, but there's a thin film that is inedible on it, take care to scrape it to prevent choking hazard later). Mustard powder. Seeds freshly ground is better. Red chilli powder Salt. Methi seeds. (fenugreek seeds. You can find at asian spice stores usually). Gingelly oil. The most simple and basic aavakaya (andhra pradesh style mango pickle with mustard) is as follows: 1 cup heaped mustard powder, one cup heaped chilli powder, one cup (not heaped) salt. A handful of fenugreek seeds. Mix evenly. Toss the mango pieces in this. Add a little gingelly oil to wet the mixtute and help the mixture stick a bit. Place into clean jar. Glass or ceramic, avoid metal. Add a generous amount of gingelly oil. You don't need to top the vessel or make a layer. Wait 2 days,then mix the entire jar once with a strong, deep spatula (or a clean hand, but beware the spice and wash very very very well afterwards). This will taste good from day 2. It's a very distinct taste from a matured pickle, and I always eat a little when it is fresh. It will slowly mature over 6 months to a year to its final preserved taste. Takealittle of it to a smaller vessel for daily use. Do not leave a metal spoon in or use a metal container. This can be experimented with as little as 2-3 mangoes. About half a cup of salt chilli and mustard should be enough for this. Also, this is just the simple recipe. There's a lot that depends on ingredient selection which can not be summarised as easily. Clean ingredients and avoiding introducing additional moisture will ensure it will stay good for atleast a couple of months. Well made pickles last multiple years.
Metacelsus 3y ago
>My contribution to this was introducing potassium permanganate as an extra layer to fight fungus. It is still known as "achaar powder" in the village. Did people end up eating potassium permanganate? I think that would be pretty toxic.
- dilawar 3y ago
  I hope not. It was meant to be sprinkled on the top after oil and salt has been added. Besides’ we didn’t know that it was toxic. I read about it in my chemistry book and it is available in a medical store. I am more worried about people keeping insecticides in husked and unhusked rice. Trace amounts of insecticides is very common in grains here. I hope this improves soon since epigenetic changes due to insecticides are very significant. Update: I looked at wiki after one more comment pointed out toxic nature of kmno4. It wasn’t purple in colour but white. I am definitely recalling the name wrong.
  - quadrifoliate 3y ago
    You might be thinking of potassium metabisulphite? [1] Sounds like it's a white powder, which fits your description. Also, I grew up in India, and am pretty sure that at school, I read about this being introduced to complement traditional preservatives. ---------------------------------------- [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potassium_metabisulfite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potassium_metabisulfite
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - ssivark 3y ago
    Love the story about the interplay between textbook chemistry and traditional food practices :-)
- lcedp 3y ago
  > Did people end up eating potassium permanganate? I think that would be pretty toxic. It is definitely toxic and dangerous. Yet, we used a very light solution of it (I'm thinking <0.1%, a very light shade of purple) to cause vomit reflex.
kumarvvr 3y ago
> potassium permanganate What ! Are you sure? That would be deadly.
- dilawar 3y ago
  Now I read the Wikipedia article about it. It doesn’t look the same. I remember it being white in colour while kmno4 is purple. Definitely I am recalling the name wrong.
  - gorjusborg 3y ago
    Could you mean potassium nitrate?
OJFord 3y ago
> Ah, the "achaar". So wrongly translated as "pickle". Why do you say that? I wrote a longer reply here to someone saying the same, but in brief my guess is that you're thinking of (US) 'dill pickle'? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37725552 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37725552 Nimbu achar is called lime pickle in the UK. That doesn't seem strange and nobody's surprised at what they get, so why is it 'so wrongly translated'?
- qart 3y ago
  Pickle is definitely the right word. Achar is a Persian loan word in Hindi. There's no good reason to use that as a standard term when writing in English. Both pickle and achar would sound alien to my great-grandparents, who spoke neither English nor Hindi. They would use the term uppinakaayi. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Asian_pickle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Asian_pickle
  - 19f191ty 3y ago
    Achar is not a Persian loan word in Hindi. Just because it's similar to the Persian word doesn't mean it's a loan word. Ancient Persian (Avestan) and Sanskrit were extremely similar to each other (basically the same language). So there are many old concepts and ideas that have the same words in the two languages. Achar is one of them, it's possibly a much older word.
    - danans 3y ago
      What is the Indo-Iranian etymology you are proposing? There is no attested word "achaara" referring to a pickle in any Sanskrit dictionary I know of (I just checked several). The standard Sanskrit words for pickle have very clear analyses, i.e. avaleha ("licked down"). A similar analysis of "achaara" in Sanskrit would lead to a nonsense meaning of "not-moving". Whereas, there is a clearly related Persian word "achaar" for a similarly preserved food, which apparently doesn't appear in any Indian texts prior to Mughal rule of South Asia. Even if there were a shared Avestan/Sanskrit antecedent, many words that share a common ancestor in those languages got re-borrowed in their Persian form into Hindi during Mughal rule. For example, the common Hindi word "garam", meaning hot, is a direct borrowing from Persian "garm". It replaced a related word for hot/heat from Sanskrit: "gharma" (the loss of original aspiration on the "g" is a feature of Persian). Both words share the same origin, but the Persian version is the one used across South Asia today. Similarly, Hindi "chaador" meaning "blanket", is a Persian borrowing that also has a Sanskrit cognate "chhaadana" meaning "cover".
hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
> Some members of this famous group were from lower castes, and obviously, they were not allowed to physically touch the pickle. Obviously... I really enjoyed your post, but that part is just so shitty (not commenting on you, just the dynamic that exists).
- guntherhermann 3y ago
  It's very interesting though isn't it! These people were obviously skilled enough to make a clean environment for pickle to... pickle, but were seen as untouchable. I would have thought that the juxtaposition was so obvious that the people who weren't 'untouchable' didn't really believe it, but went along with it because everyone else did, too. I think this is probably a kind of pluralistic ignorance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluralistic_ignorance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluralistic_ignorance
  - danans 3y ago
    > It's very interesting though isn't it! These people were obviously skilled enough to make a clean environment for pickle to... pickle, but were seen as untouchable. There are often whole systems of technicalities created to rationalize these contradictions. Here's an even more striking example (priests using clay from the ground of the house of a prostitute to make an icon for a religious festival): https://www.india.com/viral/why-is-the-soil-from-outside-a-prostitutes-home-used-during-durga-puja-623016/ https://www.india.com/viral/why-is-the-soil-from-outside-a-p... There are all kinds of these scenarios that happen when theoretical social hierarchy comes into practical contact with the lived reality of people in interdependent communities.
  - davchana 3y ago
    I agree. There were (or still are) various levels of untouchables, but not everywhere, not same people, and not same level of strictness. For example women if some areas are considered untouchables when they have periods (same home, same family, daughters, wives, mothers). Then the financial status. Then caste, tribe. Or language. Or geography. I don't agree to any of the above.
plastic_bag 3y ago
This brings back memories of my childhood. I am from a coastal village in (northern) Andhra Pradesh, India. We call it "పచ్చడి" (pachchadi) in Telugu. If it were to be made in a process usual to the rest of the state (or the country), it would not last longer due the village's close proximity to the sea. So my aunt and grandmother would also add jaggery to the pickle, to stop it from developing fungus sooner and to give it a sweet taste along with sour and spicy taste mango pickles are known for. This addition would give the pickle a deeper colour. I always preferred it over the regular mango pickle.
- suryao 3y ago
  I love bellam Avakaya. And the ginger garlic varieties are to die for. My uncle (60+ yo) is a true connoisseur though. He loves it so much and abhors the mass manufactured stuff that he actually gets small batches made in India and even sells it in the US where he lives. I helped build a Shopify storefront for him at Avakaya.com
  - plastic_bag 3y ago
    > He loves it so much and abhors the mass manufactured stuff Sounds like your uncle and I would get along really well. It's sad that Bellam Avakaya (or Bellapu Avakaya as we call it in our home) is not as famous as the other varieties.
- nischalsamji 3y ago
  the right term is ఊరగాయ or ఆవకాయ.
  - plastic_bag 3y ago
    I stand corrected. It is indeed ఊరగాయ.
  - unmole 3y ago
    Isn't ఆవకాయ a specific type of ఊరగాయ? Atleast that is how the terms are used in Telangana.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

hawk_ 3y ago

> The last process requires special hands if you wanted your pickle to last a few years. Is that some code word for hygiene? I seem to remember that the concept of hygiene for making achaar (and for other kitchen matters) was codified in religious practices in my family/community.

boruto 3y ago
Don't really think that is the case.
civilitty 3y ago
No it’s technique. There are two ways to pickle something - hot and cold. The hot method uses boiling liquid that sterilizes the container by itself but the cold method requires careful technique that keeps the container sterile until the food is loaded. Hygiene matters but only incidentally, since it’s easier to keep one’s work area clean when they are clean.
kumarvvr 3y ago
I have observed this personally in my extended family. My paternal grandmother has 3 daughters. GM and Daughter 1's pickles would last long and were delicious. Daughter 2 and 3's pickles would not be good and spoil. But, the process, and I mean, like an industrial quality detailed process of pages and pages of notes and quantities, etc would be absolutely same. My GM always said 2 & 3 dont have the 'hand' for a pickle. Fun Memory : One of my grandmother most precious possessions was not gold or money, but a 40 year old aluminum tumbler, passed on to her by her mother-in-law, that was used to measure items for the pickle (x tumblers of mustard powder, Y tumblers of chilli powder..)
satvikpendem 3y ago
It's probably more of a code word for experience and luck, like a gardener's green thumb; some have it, some simply don't, is the implication.
- lazide 3y ago
  Also it could be body biome related.

NL807 3y ago

I would love to learn how to make this. Do you or anyone here know good recipes and the process?

rmk 3y ago
You could buy a pickle spice mix (this one is a North Indian style pickle mix, by the looks of it): https://foodsofnations.com/products/indian-pickle-masala-achar-masala?_pos=1&_sid=365033785&_ss=r https://foodsofnations.com/products/indian-pickle-masala-ach... Here's a 'wet kind' to make Gujarati style pickles: https://www.tarladalal.com/homemade-indian-pickle-masala-gujarati-achar-masala-3439r https://www.tarladalal.com/homemade-indian-pickle-masala-guj... Here's a recipe to make mango pickle (this being the tail end of summer, you may chance upon raw mangoes still): https://www.tarladalal.com/spicy-mango-pickle-mango-pickle-with-mustard-oil-3403r https://www.tarladalal.com/spicy-mango-pickle-mango-pickle-w... Or try pickling lemons, which are easily available year-round: https://www.tarladalal.com/sweet-lemon-pickle-nimboo-ka-achar-no-oil-lemon-pickle-3420r https://www.tarladalal.com/sweet-lemon-pickle-nimboo-ka-acha... https://profusioncurry.com/sweet-lemon-pickle-recipe/#recipe https://profusioncurry.com/sweet-lemon-pickle-recipe/#recipe
phanimahesh 3y ago
Raw sour mangoes, chopped to eighths, with the seed taken out. (hard shell covering the seed is fine, but there's a thin film that is inedible on it, take care to scrape it to prevent choking hazard later). Mustard powder. Seeds freshly ground is better. Red chilli powder Salt. Methi seeds. (fenugreek seeds. You can find at asian spice stores usually). Gingelly oil. The most simple and basic aavakaya (andhra pradesh style mango pickle with mustard) is as follows: 1 cup heaped mustard powder, one cup heaped chilli powder, one cup (not heaped) salt. A handful of fenugreek seeds. Mix evenly. Toss the mango pieces in this. Add a little gingelly oil to wet the mixtute and help the mixture stick a bit. Place into clean jar. Glass or ceramic, avoid metal. Add a generous amount of gingelly oil. You don't need to top the vessel or make a layer. Wait 2 days,then mix the entire jar once with a strong, deep spatula (or a clean hand, but beware the spice and wash very very very well afterwards). This will taste good from day 2. It's a very distinct taste from a matured pickle, and I always eat a little when it is fresh. It will slowly mature over 6 months to a year to its final preserved taste. Takealittle of it to a smaller vessel for daily use. Do not leave a metal spoon in or use a metal container. This can be experimented with as little as 2-3 mangoes. About half a cup of salt chilli and mustard should be enough for this. Also, this is just the simple recipe. There's a lot that depends on ingredient selection which can not be summarised as easily. Clean ingredients and avoiding introducing additional moisture will ensure it will stay good for atleast a couple of months. Well made pickles last multiple years.

Metacelsus 3y ago

>My contribution to this was introducing potassium permanganate as an extra layer to fight fungus. It is still known as "achaar powder" in the village. Did people end up eating potassium permanganate? I think that would be pretty toxic.

dilawar 3y ago
I hope not. It was meant to be sprinkled on the top after oil and salt has been added. Besides’ we didn’t know that it was toxic. I read about it in my chemistry book and it is available in a medical store. I am more worried about people keeping insecticides in husked and unhusked rice. Trace amounts of insecticides is very common in grains here. I hope this improves soon since epigenetic changes due to insecticides are very significant. Update: I looked at wiki after one more comment pointed out toxic nature of kmno4. It wasn’t purple in colour but white. I am definitely recalling the name wrong.
- quadrifoliate 3y ago
  You might be thinking of potassium metabisulphite? [1] Sounds like it's a white powder, which fits your description. Also, I grew up in India, and am pretty sure that at school, I read about this being introduced to complement traditional preservatives. ---------------------------------------- [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potassium_metabisulfite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potassium_metabisulfite
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- ssivark 3y ago
  Love the story about the interplay between textbook chemistry and traditional food practices :-)
lcedp 3y ago
> Did people end up eating potassium permanganate? I think that would be pretty toxic. It is definitely toxic and dangerous. Yet, we used a very light solution of it (I'm thinking <0.1%, a very light shade of purple) to cause vomit reflex.

kumarvvr 3y ago

> potassium permanganate What ! Are you sure? That would be deadly.

dilawar 3y ago
Now I read the Wikipedia article about it. It doesn’t look the same. I remember it being white in colour while kmno4 is purple. Definitely I am recalling the name wrong.
- gorjusborg 3y ago
  Could you mean potassium nitrate?

OJFord 3y ago

> Ah, the "achaar". So wrongly translated as "pickle". Why do you say that? I wrote a longer reply here to someone saying the same, but in brief my guess is that you're thinking of (US) 'dill pickle'? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37725552 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37725552 Nimbu achar is called lime pickle in the UK. That doesn't seem strange and nobody's surprised at what they get, so why is it 'so wrongly translated'?

qart 3y ago
Pickle is definitely the right word. Achar is a Persian loan word in Hindi. There's no good reason to use that as a standard term when writing in English. Both pickle and achar would sound alien to my great-grandparents, who spoke neither English nor Hindi. They would use the term uppinakaayi. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Asian_pickle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Asian_pickle
- 19f191ty 3y ago
  Achar is not a Persian loan word in Hindi. Just because it's similar to the Persian word doesn't mean it's a loan word. Ancient Persian (Avestan) and Sanskrit were extremely similar to each other (basically the same language). So there are many old concepts and ideas that have the same words in the two languages. Achar is one of them, it's possibly a much older word.
  - danans 3y ago
    What is the Indo-Iranian etymology you are proposing? There is no attested word "achaara" referring to a pickle in any Sanskrit dictionary I know of (I just checked several). The standard Sanskrit words for pickle have very clear analyses, i.e. avaleha ("licked down"). A similar analysis of "achaara" in Sanskrit would lead to a nonsense meaning of "not-moving". Whereas, there is a clearly related Persian word "achaar" for a similarly preserved food, which apparently doesn't appear in any Indian texts prior to Mughal rule of South Asia. Even if there were a shared Avestan/Sanskrit antecedent, many words that share a common ancestor in those languages got re-borrowed in their Persian form into Hindi during Mughal rule. For example, the common Hindi word "garam", meaning hot, is a direct borrowing from Persian "garm". It replaced a related word for hot/heat from Sanskrit: "gharma" (the loss of original aspiration on the "g" is a feature of Persian). Both words share the same origin, but the Persian version is the one used across South Asia today. Similarly, Hindi "chaador" meaning "blanket", is a Persian borrowing that also has a Sanskrit cognate "chhaadana" meaning "cover".

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago

> Some members of this famous group were from lower castes, and obviously, they were not allowed to physically touch the pickle. Obviously... I really enjoyed your post, but that part is just so shitty (not commenting on you, just the dynamic that exists).

guntherhermann 3y ago
It's very interesting though isn't it! These people were obviously skilled enough to make a clean environment for pickle to... pickle, but were seen as untouchable. I would have thought that the juxtaposition was so obvious that the people who weren't 'untouchable' didn't really believe it, but went along with it because everyone else did, too. I think this is probably a kind of pluralistic ignorance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluralistic_ignorance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluralistic_ignorance
- danans 3y ago
  > It's very interesting though isn't it! These people were obviously skilled enough to make a clean environment for pickle to... pickle, but were seen as untouchable. There are often whole systems of technicalities created to rationalize these contradictions. Here's an even more striking example (priests using clay from the ground of the house of a prostitute to make an icon for a religious festival): https://www.india.com/viral/why-is-the-soil-from-outside-a-prostitutes-home-used-during-durga-puja-623016/ https://www.india.com/viral/why-is-the-soil-from-outside-a-p... There are all kinds of these scenarios that happen when theoretical social hierarchy comes into practical contact with the lived reality of people in interdependent communities.
- davchana 3y ago
  I agree. There were (or still are) various levels of untouchables, but not everywhere, not same people, and not same level of strictness. For example women if some areas are considered untouchables when they have periods (same home, same family, daughters, wives, mothers). Then the financial status. Then caste, tribe. Or language. Or geography. I don't agree to any of the above.

plastic_bag 3y ago

This brings back memories of my childhood. I am from a coastal village in (northern) Andhra Pradesh, India. We call it "పచ్చడి" (pachchadi) in Telugu. If it were to be made in a process usual to the rest of the state (or the country), it would not last longer due the village's close proximity to the sea. So my aunt and grandmother would also add jaggery to the pickle, to stop it from developing fungus sooner and to give it a sweet taste along with sour and spicy taste mango pickles are known for. This addition would give the pickle a deeper colour. I always preferred it over the regular mango pickle.

suryao 3y ago
I love bellam Avakaya. And the ginger garlic varieties are to die for. My uncle (60+ yo) is a true connoisseur though. He loves it so much and abhors the mass manufactured stuff that he actually gets small batches made in India and even sells it in the US where he lives. I helped build a Shopify storefront for him at Avakaya.com
- plastic_bag 3y ago
  > He loves it so much and abhors the mass manufactured stuff Sounds like your uncle and I would get along really well. It's sad that Bellam Avakaya (or Bellapu Avakaya as we call it in our home) is not as famous as the other varieties.
nischalsamji 3y ago
the right term is ఊరగాయ or ఆవకాయ.
- plastic_bag 3y ago
  I stand corrected. It is indeed ఊరగాయ.
- unmole 3y ago
  Isn't ఆవకాయ a specific type of ఊరగాయ? Atleast that is how the terms are used in Telangana.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]