Pickle It Up!
About
Pickles Prepared To Please The Pickiest Palate
On this page
- From a Charleston kitchen to your countertop
- The pickle that Jack built
- Our E-Z Homemade Pickle Kits — Pickling Made for Everyone
From a Charleston kitchen to your countertop
This is the story about pickle kits at Pickle It Up, made in Charleston, South Carolina — and like all great things in the Lowcountry, it started with good food, good people, and a whole lot of flavour. Everything about pickle kits here starts with that same simple idea. In 1990, our founder Jack Kahn launched Jack’s Pickleworks with a single mission: to bring authentic, small-batch kosher dill pickles to a community that took its food seriously. Using a carefully developed spice blend and a cold-brine method that required no cooking and no shortcuts, Jack quickly earned a reputation as Charleston’s go-to source for real, crunchy, flavour-packed pickles.
At his peak, Jack was supplying artisan pickles to over 50 restaurants across the Lowcountry — from neighbourhood diners to white-tablecloth establishments. His kosher dill pickles, half sour pickles, and pickled vegetables became a quiet staple behind some of Charleston’s most beloved dishes. The secret was simple: all-natural sea salt, hand-measured pickling spices, and time. No heat. No preservatives. Just the honest process of fermentation, the same way it’s been done for centuries. This page is all about pickle kits made the old way, with nothing left out.
The pickle that Jack built
In 1996, a long-time friend of Jack’s named Alexis Kong-Van De Weil saw something special in the operation and joined the business alongside her friend Nora. What had been a one-man kitchen enterprise became a three-person powerhouse. The team coined a phrase that still makes us smile today: “This is the pickle that Jack built, Alexis makes and Nora cuts.” Together, they expanded the product range, deepened ties with the local farming community, and brought Pickle It Up to Charleston farmers markets — putting their jars directly into the hands of home cooks across South Carolina. It’s part of what we love telling people about pickle kits: they started as something neighbours shared, not something mass-produced.
The response from customers was immediate. People didn’t just want to buy the pickles — they wanted to make them. They wanted to know the recipe, the spices, the method. That demand planted the seed for what Pickle It Up would eventually become: a homemade pickle kit company that puts a 35-year-old craft recipe into the hands of anyone willing to give it a go. That’s the real story about pickle kits at Pickle It Up: less about scale, more about flavour.
Our E-Z Homemade Pickle Kits — Pickling Made for Everyone
Today, Pickle It Up offers a range of E-Z no-cook pickling kits — including our bestselling Kosher Dill Pickling Kit, Half Sour Kit, and Combo Kit — each containing everything you need to make up to 8 quarts of real, all-natural pickles at home. No cooking. No heating. No experience required. Just Jack’s original spice blend, a jar, some cucumbers, and a little patience. It’s a simple, honest way to learn about pickle kits by actually making one yourself.
Our kits have been featured in Southern Living, Bon Appétit, and the Post & Courier, and we’ve shipped artisan pickle kits to home picklers across the United States. But we’re still rooted right here in Charleston, SC — still using the same spice recipe Jack perfected in 1990, still committed to the idea that the best pickles are the ones you make yourself \u2014 which is really the whole point about pickle kits. The best kits that can be used by anyone. If you want to learn more about pickle kits and how ours are made, this page is where it all begins.
