Pepper Relish
The recipie for this was written down and saved from a YouTube Video somewhere around 2018. We have tweaked it a bit for our purposes and make a new batch every couple years or so.The photos below were taken while making two batches in Oct 2021. 1. 32 cups of Hot Pepper n Onion 2. 54 cups of Sweet Pepper n Onion
Equipment
- knives
- cutting board
- vegetable chopper
- mixing bowl
- water bath canner
- canning tools
- cooking pot
- cheesecloth
- cooking string
- 500 ml canning jars
- new snap lids
Ingredients
- 24 cups peppers chopped
- 8 cups onions chopped
- 10 cups vinegar 5% min
- 1/8 cup vinegar 5% min
- 7 cups sugar
- 2 tbsp allspice berries
- 4 tbsp celery seed
- 2 sticks cinnamon broken in half
- 2 tbsp cloves whole
- 4 tbsp mustard seed
- 4 tsp turmeric
Instructions
Vegetable Prep Work
- cut and remove seeds24 cups peppers, 8 cups onions
- chop all vegetables and mix them in a suitably sized bowl24 cups peppers, 8 cups onions
- add celery seed to pepper and onion mix in thoroughly4 tbsp celery seed
Make Brine and Cook
- put spices into cheesecloth and tie into a bag using cooking twine, submerge into the liquid and tie it off for easy removal later2 tbsp allspice, 2 tbsp cloves, 4 tbsp mustard seed, 4 tsp turmeric, 2 sticks cinnamon
- bring sugar, vinegar and cheesecloth bag with spices to a boil and simmer for 10 minutes7 cups sugar, 10 cups vinegar
- add in chopped vegetables and bring to a low boil for 20 minutesremove the spice bag and discard
Actual Canning
- heat fully submersed jars in canning pot and boil for 10 minutesadd approx. 1/8 cup of vinegar to your canning water to prevent buildups of minerals on the surface of your pots1/8 cup vinegar
- fill jars to approx. 1/2" headspacegently stir to remove air bubbleswipe jar rim with moist towelput snap lids on jars and lightly tighten rings
- process jars for 20 minutes at full boil, this may change depending on your specific elevation
- remove jars and let cool overnight, snap lids should start popping soon after removing from the canner
Notes
The cost of this project will greatly vary depending on the source of veggies you use, we either use what we grow in the yard or have purchased bulk bags of bulk variety peppers from a local fruit stand at the end of the season.
Chopping peppers in one of the units shown is best handled by using small pieces and putting the skin side up.
It may take a hard smack on the tool to cut peppers appropriately but our chopper has worked for years of use.
Pushing down slowly on front of the unit will lead to breaking the small hinge points. A sharp blow straight down works great though.
The jar shown has a bit too much headspace, headspace should be closer to around 1/2" as per the Ball Blue Book.
Our second Relish batch had way too much brine but it will not go to waste. I am already planning on using it for pickled onion slices tomorrow night.