Fermented Sweet Pickle Relish

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Fermented sweet pickle relish is delicious mixed with tuna salad, for homemade tartar sauce, for topping your hot dogs and hamburgers, or my favourite way to eat it – right off a spoon! 

Why Fermented Foods

There are so many great reasons to ferment foods!

Even just adding a small amount of a fermented food to each meal will help support your digestion and overall gut health. 

Fermented Foods:

• help maintain a healthy gut flora
• are raw, so you don’t lose nutritional value like you do with canning
• helps extend the refrigerator life of fresh foods
• helps us absorb more nutrients from the food
• are quick and easy to make
• you can make just one jar at a time! 

If you want to learn more about fermented and cultured foods, a great resource is Cultures for Health!

This post contains affiliate links, which means if you make a purchase through one of these links, I may earn a small amount of commission at no extra cost to you. See full disclosure here.

Supplies for Fermented Sweet Pickle Relish

• Quart sized mason jar
• Fermentation weight
• Fermentation lid

I absolutely love my Easy Fermenter kit from Nourished Essentials.

It includes everything you need to get started with fermentation, except the mason jars (which most of you will already have!). 

• Fermentation Lids
• Glass Fermentation Weights
• A Recipe Book wth lots of awesome recipes (which you can follow exactly, or use as a jumping-off point to create your own recipes!)

If you don’t have a fermentation weight or lid, don’t worry! I’ll share some other options you can use. You can definitely ferment without fancy equipment!

Ingredients for Fermented Sweet Pickle Relish

When chopping the ingredients for the sweet cucumber relish, you can choose what consistency you would like. I like a chunkier relish because I like a bit of a crunch. But if you’d prefer a finer relish, you can chop the veggies in a food processor.

This is a great recipe for using up those pickling cucumbers that got a little too big in your garden!

• 3 cups Pickling cucumbers – finely chopped or diced
• ½ cup sweet red pepper – finely chopped or diced
• ½ cup onions – finely chopped or diced
• ½ cup honey (preferably local & raw – not pasteurized)
• ½ cup apple cider vinegar
• 1 tbsp non-iodized salt (I use Redmond’s Sea Salt, which I order in a 10 lb bucket)
• 1 tsp turmeric
• 1 tbsp yellow mustard seeds

Directions for Fermented Sweet Pickle Relish

1. Combine Vegetables

In a medium sized mixing bowl, combine all the veggies.

Transfer the veggies to a quart sized mason jar, or 2 pint sized mason jars (wide mouth preferred).

If necessary, use a sauerkraut pounder to make it all fit.

2. Combine Other Ingredients

• Combine the honey, apple cider vinegar, salt, turmeric and mustard seeds in the same bowl you used for the veggies.
• Pour the mixture over the veggies (It may take awhile for the liquid to cover all the veggies, that’s ok).

3. Add Fermentation Weight

Next, go ahead and place your clean glass fermentation weight on top of your cucumbers.

If you don’t have a fermentation weight, the other option is to wrap a cabbage leaf or a grape leaf over the top of the mixture, then use something heavy (like a rock) to hold it down.

Some people will wrap the rock in a plastic bag first, because rocks are porous and you never know if there could be some kind of bacteria or something in them. 

4. Add Fermentation Lid

Your last step is to place your fermentation lid on top of the relish. Simply screw it onto the jar. 

Or if you’re using a different type of fermentation lid, follow the directions for your own lids.

The Nourished Essentials Easy Fermenter lids include a date dial, which is incredibly handy!

If you have several ferments going at once, it’s easy to forget when you started them.

So I usually set today’s date on the dial, then write on the front of the jar how many days I want to ferment. 

If you don’t have a fermentation lid, you can simply use a regular mason jar lid, just don’t screw it on too tightly.

You may need to burp the jar once a day (by loosening and re-tightening the lid), to allow gasses to escape.

You just want to be extra mindful of cleanliness, to avoid having any bacteria enter your fermentation vessel. 

5. Ferment for 3 Days

• Allow your sweet cucumber relish to ferment at room temperature for 3 days. After 3 days you can test it to see how it tastes (spoiler alert – it will be delicious!)

8. Switch Lid & Refrigerate

When your fermented sweet relish is done to your liking, remove the fermentation lid and glass weight, and apply a regular plastic lid.

This way you can use your weight and lid for another fermentation project!

(I prefer plastic lids, because metal can react with the salt in the ferment, causing it to rust, which can be unappetizing!).

How Long Will Fermented Sweet Pickle Relish Last in the Fridge?

This fermented cucumber relish will keep up to 6 months in the refrigerator once fully fermented, but I bet it will get eaten up long before then! 

I hope you enjoy this simple recipe for fermented sweet pickle relish.

Once you start fermenting things, it’s totally addictive, and you’ll suddenly find yourself wondering what else you can ferment! 

Here are some ideas for you.

Other fermented recipes you might like to try:

Simple Lacto-Fermented Salsa in a Mason jar
Lacto-Fermented Beets
Fermented Cherry Tomatoes
Fermented Red Onions
Fermented Green Beans
Fermented Honey Garlic

 

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Nourished Essentials Easy Fermenter Kit

10 lb bucket of Redmond’s Real Sea Salt

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If you make this recipe, let us know in the comments how it turned out! 

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