Sweet Pickle Relish for your Pantry! MIY Monday post!

Good morning, sweet friends! Its been a while, as we are working on so many different projects over here!

I wanted to share our favorite sweet pickle relish with you today, because if your garden is like mine, things are coming in by bucket loads, including most of these items! We have also had huge bouts of rain, followed by intense dryness, which means our cukes can go from tiny to monstrous within 24-48 hours. This is one of our favorite ways to preserve them for the winter months!

Sweet Pickle Relish Recipe

base ingredients:

8 cups roughly chopped cucumbers, seeded if you prefer

2 onions white, roughly chopped

1 red onion, roughly chopped

2-3 sweet bell peppers (we do a mix of colors because its prettier)

3 jalepenos, minced after deseeding

2-3 basil leaves, minced

liquid for syrup:

2 cups apple cider vinegar (click here for my recipe on how to make your own)

1 1/2 cups sugar (turbinado makes this rich and deeply flavored)

2 tsp celery seed, mustard seed, red pepper flakes. peppercorns

2 Tbs salt

Step 1: Chop the cucumbers and then cover with cold water that has had 1/2 cup salt added to it. Let soak for two hours. Meanwhile, assemble the rest of the ingredients, and make the syrup on stove, setting aside to cool to room temp.

Step 2: Rinse Cukes in clear, cold water twice. Then add them to the remaining ingredients, and mix very well.

Step 3: Make sure your jars are sterilized and waiting in room temp water. Lids can be sitting in hot water on stove.

Step 4: Pour syrup over the base ingredients, mixing very well. It will quickly begin to make its own syrup. Ladle mixture into the sterilized jars, leaving a 1″ headspace. Ladle liquid into jars so ingredients are mostly covered. (you will have extra left over, that is totally fine!)

Step 5: Wipe rims well with wet cloth, place hot lids and rings on jar. Waterbath process for 15 minutes for pints, and jelly jars. 20 minutes for quarts. (yes we do make some quarts to take to potlucks or other family gatherings where a lot of people will be eating!)

Step 6: Once processing time is done, remove immediately to a cool, draft-free place and let sit until jars are completely cooled and sealed. Then remove rings, wash, label, and put into your pantry!

Optional: You can change this recipe slightly by what kind of sugar you use! For a deep, rich color and flavor profile that goes really well with pork or chicken, use a darker colored sugar. For the standard topping you would see on hot dogs, use white sugar! We have also added in ground ginger and mace powder for a delicious topping over baked chicken! Whatever you want to do, choose the options and run with it!

Some years are full of plentiful harvests, and some years are challenging. This has been one of those challenging years for raising a garden, and I’m thankful to have whatever we can put up for the pantry, which is why we have made 3 dozen jars of this in various recipes. I know in the middle of the winter, we will appreciate the crisp, sweet taste of this over other foods when fresh veggies are more expensive and challenging to find.

May you have a blessed day! Check out a couple of my other commonly shared recipes below for using to stock your pantry!

Blessings to you and yours,

~Heather