Naranga Curry / Achaar - Lemon Pickle - Kerala Style

Kerala Lemon pickle

A few months back, I posted Mango pickle. Click here to read the recipe of Mango pickle.
This time I am posting lemon pickle. But the full credit for this recipe goes to my mother-in-law. Its she who has prepared this. It is entirely different from my mothers version of Lemon pickle. This one also very different and really tasty.

As we know lemons are highly rich in Vitamin C that has huge health benefits such as improving immunity, reducing body fat etc. It improves skin improves beauty.
One of the major health benefits of drinking lemon water is that it paves way for losing weight faster. Lemon juice is also very good for cleansing out the toxins in our body.

Ingredients 

1. Lemon - 15 nos
2. Mustard seeds - 4-5 tbsn
3. FenuGreek- 4-5 tbsn
4. Green chillies - 15 nos
5. Red chilly powder - 7-8 tbsn (Kashmiri chilly powder is preferred due to colour and texture that it imparts to the pickle). If you are using the normal chilly powder, you can use around 3-4 tbspns
6. Asafoedita - 2 tblspn
7. Salt to taste - Around 7-8 tbspns would be required

Salt is an excellent preservative and hence no additional preservative such as vinegar etc. is required to be added. Mustard is used in the pickle for decreasing the sourness and for increasing the thickness.

Process

First, wash and clean the lemons. 
Chop each lemon into 2 halves and then cut it into small pieces. 
Add salt, mix thoroughly and then add the chopped chillies into it and mix it thoroughly.
Keep this aside for one day .

Fry the fenugreek  seeds till it becomes dark brown colour and then grind it in a mixie to make it into a powder. 

Next take the mustard seeds and grind them to make a powder. 

Keep both these powders aside.

Prepare 2 glasses of boiled and cooled water and keep it aside.

Next add the fenugreek powder, mustard powder, Asafeodita powder, Red chilly powder into the chopped lemon-green chilly mix. 


Pour the boiled-cooled water little by little into the mix and keep mixing it thoroughly to bring in consistency. Keep it aside for 2-3 days.
Much of the water would have got absorbed into pickle. If required, add a little more of the boiled and cooled down water. Add salt if required. Keep in a tight ceramic or glass container for 2-3 days. 

In 2-3 days, lemon pickle would be ready to be consumed. 
Since this is a pickle, it must not be excessively eaten - 1-2 tbspns is the max that we must consume at a time since it contains lot of salt. 

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