Frequently Asked Questions

Pickles are definitely not unhealthy. But certainly pre-biotic if consumed in quantities as condiments and supplemented with meals. Pickles have been traditionally consumed as an essential element to meals as condiments since ages. More importantly it is indispensable to the Indian culture and civilization. Pickling is a craft that needs to be preserved. We have converted the craft of pickling into a science of preservation to make a wholesome product.

Pickles definitely are not food products that contribute significantly to nutritional demand of individuals. They are condiments to be consumed judiciously in small quantities alongside meals to make boring meals interesting, spicy, or tasty!

Let’s be truthful. Commercial pickles can never be called home made in the true sense. But PASAND pickles are true and closest to homemade pickles in terms of quality, formulation and process.

Other prevalent contemporary commercial pickle brands employ a commercial pickling method where the pickled fruits and vegetables are stored with spices in giant vats for months together and even years. Against that PASAND pickles are fresh because they are made in small batches freshly prepared every week as per demand from preserved seasonally procured and stocked fruits and vegetables using fresh spices and ingredients.

Glass is recognised as safest primary packing medium for long term food preservation and storage wrt keeping quality because of its inert properties. Glass enhances shelf life and appeal. We as a policy prefer glass over other packaging containers like flexible plastic pouches or rigid plastic containers (PET jars).

Nothing much, just that we are a core pickling company professionally run by hard core food connoisseurs who believe that we must not make or sell or promote products with regards to quality that we would not consume ourselves at home. We have policy of upholding quality values in processing and products to ensure substandard products do not reach the end consumer. We do not compromise in quality in any way whatsoever in our ingredients, products and processes.

The products are having traditional recipes and formulations giving a homemade appeal with scientific hot filling that preserves its flavour and nutrition in spite of the thermal processing. Each individual product has its own speciality owing to its composition and process. Please follow PASAND on social media to know more about specific products. Eg. Mango pickle – the rajapuri varierty that we use determine its naturally astringency, the ‘gutli’ we remove allow its palatability and the preservation technique we employ allows it to retain its firmness and quality. 

o Quality and grade of ingredients

o Composition Proportion of ingredients i.e recipe formulation

o Proportion of characteristic ingredients

o Processing of ingredients

o Processing of product

  How brands compromise on quality to accommodate populist pricing to gain market share?

Brands compromise in any of the above criteria to bring the price to gain market share. If you have any general or specific question related to any PASAND product please feel free to contact us.

One of the most common ways of cutting down cost is to buy low grade or variety of fresh produce. PASAND has the highest quality of fresh produce, may it be located in any part of India. Eg. Ginger is procured from the Karnataka ginger belts of Hassan and Shimoga. Such a variety is of the highest grade, has the best pungency and gives maximum yield and therefore most expensive.

 The Quality control lab at PASAND constantly, tirelessly and unfailingly checks each and every lot of fresh produce entering in and ensures it is as per the quality specified. This is applicable for all packing material, fresh f&v, ingredients, edible oil, spices, etc. the specifications or quality parameters are benchmarked to make it incomparable to any other grade or variety.

We procure from the same suppliers and regions year on year. For Example – there are a hundred different Indian varieties of green chillies but we only procure moderately mild chilli variety. We test this by monitoring pungency and colour by scientific methods to determine heat value and colour value over and above physical appearance.

Pickles brands that claim healthy products citing “less oil” are clearly cheating you. Edible oil is the most expensive ingredient in pickle and reducing oil component in the pickle product reduces its price significantly. Premium quality pickles like PASAND always have ample oil topping that stays afloat the product just like home-made pickles. Populist brands simply replace fresh good quality edible oil with watery vinegar and excess salt that is super cheap to make. Some brands even use cheap edible oil like cotton seed oil which is unhealthy due to its high content of saturated and trans fatty acids.

Yes and No. Customers that prefer many other brands that engage in discounted pricing like “buy one-get one free” kind are being taken for a ride. Such product costing is nothing but inflated MRPs sold under disguise of discounts and offers to keep the supply channel pipeline moving for substandard and mediocre products with gross deficits in traditional pickling recipes, formulation & methods in addition to resorting to economic adulteration.

You may prefer other brands because of brand loyalty, regional taste, and subconscious buying habit or simply due to product availability. That’s fine, but do give PASAND a try, it might change your opinion and perception of quality pickles and food products.

The facility is USFDA inspected and approved by Indian government Export Inspection authority that inspects and clears individual consignment meant for supply to global importing countries. Regulatory agencies and external auditors have been monitoring implementation of GMP and HACCP in process and premises since 3 decades.

They are fresh and of the highest grade. We try to ensure they are free from objectionable foreign matter by strict protocols of hygiene and cleanliness during handling of food ingredients. Selection of Certain characteristic ingredient like jiggery, asafoetida (hing), turmeric resonate with the high quality product that we aspire to make.

 Our products are made in small batches and therefore each batch is thoroughly prepared, inspected and approved before it reaches the packing. Multiple inspection checks ensure a zero defect product. Certain products have typical labour intensive kitchen processes that take 4 days to prepare a batch to achieve a ritual perfection without resorting to any short cuts. All products are thermally processed and hot-filled in glass jars which is something unique and also described in scientific literature across major food science publications as indispensable. 

PASAND has set benchmark in quality and process when it comes to pickles. Although we continually learn and improve to improve quality and customer experience, it would be difficult for a brand to match its quality with pasand.

The recipe and formulation are backbone of desi product like pickles. It is essential to maintain a traditional approach to processing to make it taste like home-made. Products are free from economic adulterants. Poor quality spices get rejected by our quality assurance system.

We have all sorts of pickles based on type of fruit, region, hotness level, edible oil, tongue, etc. although we try to enhance our range as much as as possible, of course we don’t represent all the products in the pickle map of india.

Nothing. Its typically addition of cost of all ingredients, spices, oil, glass jar, process cost, shipping cost and a slight profit margin which helps to pay our diligent and persevering staff to keep the our moral duty to keep alive pickling traditional true to its core, originality and recipe. Shipping is sometimes as expensive as the product itself for many far-fetched locations that we serve through our online shop 

Although glass is best packing medium to store and pack pickled products. It has disadvantages wrt handling. Glass being brittle can create food safety issues if not managed properly during manufacturing operations. Broken glass is a hazard for a food consumer. Therefore many brands avoid glass as their choice of container. The glass handling procedures at every level of operations in line with international food safety standards ensure safety wrt glass hazard contamination. 

We export our products to premium brands based in USA, Australia-New Zealand, Canada, UK, Japan, Europe, gulf countries and even China. Our aim is to cater to the global consumer with premium products without compromising on quality of the process and product. We strive to provide value and service to our final customer through product quality and by exceeding customer expectation. For the people of Indian Diaspora residing in the various parts of the world, the products are an essential in their everyday lives. Our products are high in demand owing to the rich flavour, savoury taste and a feel of home-made recipes. Our ethnic products become an inseparable part of the staple diet and keep the connoisseurs, the epicureans as well as the gourmands close to their native home and motherland India in spirit.

Through aroma, oil content, freshness, colour value, fineness, moisture content. Best quality spices are always expensive than their poor quality counterpart grades. The sheer diversity of the Indian produce across the subcontinent make it harder for any common individual to determine quality and establish superiority. Trust in humanity and fear of God is the only way forward. Spice brands indulge in blending multiple grades of a particular spice to bring it to a commercial product that mass markets prefer. Not only that spice brands recently have started resorting to unregulated use of oleoresins or spice extracts to impart colour and hotness artificially in products.

The USFDA manages to supervise industries a plethora of verification and monitoring activities, record requirements, process parameters, hygiene protocols. Compliance to hygiene requirements, personal cleanliness, product specifications, labelling laws, microbiological testing and customer grievance redressal. We at PASAND maintain more than 55 kinds of records to establish, manage, maintain and continually improve the QMS (quality management system) across various departments.

Yes the products are natural, we do not use artificial flavours, colours or any nature identical substances to enhance characteristics of any product. To reduce cost pickle brands across Indian have started using extracts to replace expensive chilli powder.

Additives are used in ppm quantities as per the functionality that render products easy to manage in the service life. We mainly use chemical preservatives that helps prevent any surface spoilage once product is opened.

Vinegar (acetic acid) and Citrate are used as acidifying agents. This is to ensure pH remains maintained at levels that avoid spoilage by outside environmental contamination. But we are able to use it judiciously in products due to thermal processing and hot filling. Perhaps PASAND might be the only pickle brand in India that hot fills the products. 

Yes. Sodium benzoate is a chemical preservative that helps spoilage by fighting against molds. It’s a chemical preservative use to add to canned food products to avoid fungal growth to prevent food spoilage and extend shelf life. It is used in ppm quantities and totally safe for human health. In the future we plan to completely eliminate this chemical for the larger public perception. However globally and in India the fssai allows it in predetermined quantities in commercial pickles. 

Salt is a big culprit in pickles and many processed foods. It is the single most cause or reason attributed to deteriorated quality of processed foods wrt health and nutrition. It has led to lifestyle diseases like hypertension and diabetes. We have undertaken a salt reduction program in our process and have been successful in reducing salt by 50% as compared to other pickle brands. We thermally process and hot fill pickles to provide a shelf life rather than depending on salt content as a cheap and unhealthy alternative. Using less salt make the product prone to spoilage and to offset that we thermally process all our products to avoid chance of spoilage and pathogenic microbial contamination. Frankly only healthy eating habits can help eliminate salt completely from diets. 

Economically motivated adulteration (EMA) occurs when someone intentionally leaves out, takes out, or substitutes a valuable ingredient or part of a food. EMA also occurs when someone adds a substance to a food to make it appear better or of greater value. For example, when manufacturers add a cheaper vegetable oil to an expensive olive oil but sell the product as 100% olive oil, they are cheating their customers. PASAND products are free from any economic adulteration.

We have ethical trade policies to ensure we act responsibly. Adhering strictly to industrial factory act norms make us act responsibly towards workers wrt wages, timings, discrimination, modern slavery, well-being, working conditions. Local women residing in the nearby villages make a large workforce and we shall always remain in their debt for their tireless efforts for monotonous activities that the industrial age has ushered. Pickle making is a labour intensive art not amenable to automation and mechanization.

No that’s just a fancy term which many brands use to entice gullible customers to charge more. Pickles have unique consistency amongst food products with heterogeneous chunks and gravy so many of the process are labour intensive and some are mechanised. Both require care and attention wrt food safety and quality. PASAND pickles and chutneys are uniquely formulated to ensure they remain true to the core traditionally and retain ability to be packed and preserved for a considerable ling time. 

Monitoring employee hygiene, enforcing hand-washing at regular intervals, prevention of outside dirt and air inside the manufacturing location. A plethora of cleaning and sanitary operations wrt machines and manpower.

PASAND food products – pickles & chutneys are made in a GMP facility; meaning: Cleanliness of environment, hygiene in the process, sanitary condition of preparation and packing of products manufactured. 

Through policies, trainings, instructions, guidelines, supervisions, inspections, quality control processes and audits. More so the supervisors and staff engaged in production manufacturing process are themselves self-regulate their work owing to the stringent hygiene and food safety protocols along with an active food safety culture. Following certifications and standards devised by GFSI (global food safety initiative) help companies establish robust FSMS (food safety management system) that align company goals and set directions for an organization to achieve the same.