1 heavy-bottomed pot needs to hold all pint jars at once
1 Ladle
1 Jar tongs
Ingredients
5cupsdiced peppers – mixed sweet and hotabout 1 1/2 lbs
1 1/2lbs.green tomatoes about 3 medium
1small onionchopped
Brine ingredients:
3cupsapple cider vinegar
1 3/4cupssugar
1tsp.whole allspice berries
1tsp.black peppercorns
1cinnamon stick
3bay leaves
2tbsp.yellow mustard seeds
2tbsp.kosher salt
Instructions
Step One: Chop the vegetables
This will take a while, but you want to hand dice all the tomatoes, onions and peppers. I’ve seen recipes where you toss it into the food processor and chop everything fine, but I personally don’t like the look of that. And if you try that with the green tomatoes, you will end up with mush. What you want is a small, uniform dice cut for all the veggies–onions, tomatoes and peppers. You can see how pretty it is when you mix pepper types.Here’s how small my pepper dice was…
Notice that the size of the dice is the same as the pepper. The uniform dice not only looks better, but it actually helps keep the cooking time of the two ingredients about the same. Here is my tomato dice.
In a colander, combine the diced tomatoes, onion and peppers with two tablespoons of kosher salt and place over a sink to drain for a few hours. This will draw out the excess moisture from the vegetables.
Step Two: Sterilize your canning jars
Before you start cooking the piccalilli relish, sterilize your canning jars and have them ready to fill.
Place your glass canning jars, jar rings and lids into a heavy-bottomed stockpot or canner and fill with enough water to completely submerge the jars at the top. Place the pan on a medium-high heat and bring to a boil. Boil for 10 minutes. Turn off the heat and let the jars sit in the hot water until you are ready to fill them.
Step Three: Cooking the Piccalilli Relish
When the chopped ingredients have drained for a couple of hours, you are ready to make your relish. In a large pot, add the brine ingredients–apple cider vinegar, sugar, allspice berries, peppercorns, bay leaf, cinnamon stick, mustard seeds. Heat the brine over a medium heat until it comes to a boil. Add all the chopped and drained vegetables into the brine and bring back up to a boil. Turn down the heat and simmer for 30-45 minutes. The vegetables should be cooked down and the mix will look like a relish. Remove from the heat.
Step Four: Canning the Piccalilli Relish
As soon as you take the relish off the heat, return to your stockpot of hot water and jars. Remove the jars, rings and lids from the water bath and place on a clean kitchen towel to dry. DON’T THROW OUT THE HOT WATER! You will be using this for your heat-processing. Turn the heat back on the water to bring the temperature back up.
Ladle the relish into the canning jars. Make sure that you distribute the spices evenly throughout the jars. Leave at least 1/2 inch room at the top of the jar. Tap the jars gently on a cutting board or on your towel to force air bubbles up to the top. Then, making sure that you’ve wiped up any drips from the lid, place the clean, new lids on the jars and put the rings on to hold the lids in place. The rings should not be too tight. Just tight enough to loosely close the jar.
Use jar tongs (if you have them) to place the closed jars back into hot water bath. The jars should be completely submerged under the hot water and have about an inch of water above each lid.
Bring the water back up to a boil and heat process the relish for 15 minutes. Remove from the water bath with the jar tongs and let the jars cool to room temperature. You will hear the jar lids pop as they cool and seal themselves. They are now safe to store at room temperature in your kitchen pantry.
Aren’t they pretty? These make great gifts… if you can part with them. Enjoy!