One of my favorite combinations of taste and texture is sour and salty tang mixed with a crunchy bite, and nothing offers this better than pickles. I’m not trying to sound like the Jersey Shore’s pickle-obsessed munchkin Snooki, but pickles show up in many cuisines—from Korean to German, and just about everything in between—and the importance of this preservation method in food history is undeniable.

Korea’s most famous pickled vegetable is kimchee, and Saveurs de Coree) makes theirs in-house and without MSG. Owner King Tai-Chow was kind enough to invite me into the kitchen to watch his Korean wife make her own homespun recipe. Heavy Chinese cabbage is soaked in salt water for about six hours, which shrivels up its stiff body. The base is then stuffed with even more salt and mixed with a brackish blend of sticky rice paste, radish, leek, spring onion, garlic, ginger and two types of red chili pepper powder. The cabbage is then wrapped in a cute baby bundle and fermented for a few days, depending on the season, temperature and desired sourness. The final spicy, salty product tastes of vinegar, but the sour flavor is actually achieved through fermentation alone. The restaurant also serves a fantastic white kimchee, which is good for those who prefer mild flavors. This kimchee goes through the same process but is mixed with pear juice, garlic and ginger.

The Chinese have a variety of pickles in their cuisine, including suan cai, Tianjin preserved pickles, and my favorite zha cai, which literally means “pressed vegetable.” Zha cai is made with the upper stems of mustard plants and has a similar production process to kimchee but is pressed before it’s put into storage. You can find this in any local Chinese supermarket. It’s even saltier than your average pickle, but I love it for the flavor it adds to soups and congee. You can often find it in Sichuan suan la fen or dan dan mian.

Of course, I couldn’t forget the classic dill pickle. Whenever I’m in New Jersey, I always can count on Jewish delicatessens to have the best. At Israeli-owned Biteapitta, pickle master Shuly explains, “We make it homemade because we couldn’t find our style here.” Unlike kimchee, these pickles are stored in sunlight and Shuly even showed me her big jar of cucumbers stuffed like sardines along with chili, dill and garlic. The dill pickle (¥5) has the perfect sour tang, crunchy crisp exterior and tender inside, just like the pickles back home.

While most buy their pickles pre-packaged, I’ve learned that pickling is a process that needs lots of tender love and care in order to get that perfect salty, sour, crunchy combination.