So my husband said he was going past a vegetable stand and did I want any pickling cucumbers. Yes, five pounds would be good. He came home lugging a huge plastic bag of cucumbers. “They were only selling them in half- and full bushels. This is a half bushel.” Okaaayyy! I made my planned final batch of bread and butter pickles from the smallest ones. Then I needed something that uses a lot of cukes – big ones.
Green relish you buy at the grocery store, I thought, is only cucumbers. No peppers, onions or whatever in it. Google’s AI gave me a recipe for “sweet pickle relish” and also explained that it differs from “hamburger relish” in that the latter often contains peppers and onions.
The amount of vinegar called for seemed too much for the amount of cucumber. Still, I followed the recipe to see, and I was right. Too liquidy. Next time, I increased the cucumber and decreased the vinegar. Better, but still only gave me two pint jars. A lot of work for two jars of relish. So third time, I doubled the recipe, keeping my proportions of more cukes, less vinegar. It worked.
First, Cucumber Preparation
4 cups of chopped cucumber is about 1.5-2 pounds of cucumber. That’s 6-8 medium sized pickling cucumbers. You can just chop them up seeds and all. If you’ve got field cucumbers, as I had, you need 2-4 and you want to seed them first so your relish isn’t too watery and seedy. Just slice in half lengthwise and scoop out the middle. I used a grapefruit spoon. Its serrated edge easily pulls out the pulp and seeds. Then cut the cucumbers in chunks and chop up in a food processor.
Pickle Relish Recipe with annotations
The numbers on the right side of the ingredients list are my doubling of it. As given, the recipe made 2 pints of relish. Doubling it gave me five. Note too that I more than doubled the cucumber amount and less than doubled the vinegar. Use your own taste for the amount of sugar you like.
