Sweet Relish

Last year I tried making sweet relish for the first time. I wasn’t sure if we would eat it so I didn’t make very much. Just one batch. Well, the fact that I am making it again this year should let you know that it was a success.

The only time I really use relish is on hot dogs. But I really like it on hot dogs. So we don’t go through it very quickly. But I figure, if I don’t have to buy it from the store anymore then that is worth it. I will probably still only do one batch this year but only because I haven’t figured out any other way to use it. I am open to suggestions if you have any.

Like so many things. Making relish is not as hard as I was expecting it to be. Here is a basic run down of the process:

• Assemble ingredients
• Chop everything into small pieces
• Soak in salt water for several hours
• rinse brine off
• mix with sweet and sour brine
• pour into sterilized jars
• process

That’s it! Sounds do-able right? Keep reading for more details on each step.

Ingredients

The typical ingredients in relish are cucumbers, peppers, onions and garlic. But I think you could do some others if it sounded good to you. I can’t think of anything else right now.

Chop everything up

Once you decide what it going in you just have to chop it all up. I use this bad boy. It gets the job done in a hurry. But if you don’t have one you can either use a knife, which would really give you practice on your knife skills. You could also put your veggies into a food processor and pulse it until everything is the size chunks you want in your relish.

Soak in Salt Brine

Once you have all the veggies chopped pour the pickling salt or kosher salt over them and cover everything with cold water. Then let it soak in the refrigerator for several hours. I’m not actually sure what this step does. I think it might remove more of the liquid so the final product is less wet. Does anyone out there know? Please leave me a comment.

Isn’t it so pretty? I love the little pop of red and orange in there.

Sweet and Sour Brine

When you are ready to get the salt brine out, you can start your brine cooking. Mix the vinegar, sugar, celery seed and mustard seed in a large pot on the stove. Then heat it up until it boils stirring occasionally until the sugar is dissolved. Once you have it mixed and warming on the stove you can pull your soaking veggies out of the fridge and an get the salt water brine out of it.

Rinse off Salt Brine

In this step you want to strain the water off and rinse the salt out. Make sure you rinse it really well. I was doing this step and wasn’t really taking it too seriously, just a quick rinse and push out the water. Tyler saw what I was doing and told me I should taste it and wow! it was salty, so I rinsed it quite a bit more. Then I tasted it again to make sure it wasn’t still salty. So that is a tip, if you aren’t sure if you have rinsed it enough just taste it.

You also want to push out as much water as you can. Like I said, I think getting the water out of the cucumbers was the purpose of the salt water brine. So get all the water out that you can. I put mine in a mesh sieve to rinse it, then I just pushed on it to get as much of the water out as I could.

Once you get all the salt water off your veggies you can add them to the vinegar/sugar brine. Then you just need to heat everything through. Bring it to a boil and let it simmer for 10 minutes.

While you do that, get your jars and lids ready. Unless you were on top of it and already had them done. If so, good job! Then the relish just goes into the jars and can be processed. I used a slotted spoon to put the mix into jars because I wanted to fill the bottles with the relish more than the juice. Once I had all the jars full of the veggie mix I added some of the liquid on top of the veggies. But there was still quite a bit left over.

I have a hard time sticking to recipes when it comes to using stuff from the garden because I usually just want to use up what I have. But I actually tried to stick to the recipe last year but then I felt like it ended up with too much liquid so I adjusted the ratio this time. I ended up using about twice as many veggies as the recipe called for. Even then, I left out some of the liquid.

I got the original recipe from geniuskitchen.com, but I did use it more as a guideline than a strict recipe. If you don’t have the exact measurements I don’t think it is a big deal. Just use up what you have, I say. The pH isn’t really an issue here because of the brine so just fill your bowl, or pot.

Here is what I did:

Veggies:

• 8 cups cucumbers, de-seeded and chopped (I cut them in half or quarters the scooped the seeds out with a spoon before chopping them)
• 2 cups onions, chopped
• 1 cup orange bell pepper, chopped
• 1 cup red bell pepper, chopped

brine for soaking:

• 1/4 cup pickling salt (or kosher salt)
• Water to cover everything

vinegar mix:

• 3 1/2 cups sugar
• 2 cups apple cider vinegar
• 2 Tbl. celery seed
• 2 Tbl. mustard seeds

That’s it! It was so easy and so good! I really loved how it turned out. It’s better than buying it from the store. Especially when you have a bumper crop of cucumbers that you need to use up. If you don’t have cucumbers give me a call in July or August, I will gladly hook you up.

Try making the relish and let me know how it goes.