I just made some sweet relish from about 7 pounds of cucumbers. Making sweet relish is more involved than pickles, but it's still pretty easy. The seven pounds of cucumbers produced seven pints of relish. That's probably about a three year supply for us, but I am sure there are family members or friends that will enjoy it as well.
First grate up the cucumbers. I used the food processor making quick work of this. I started with a chopping blade and quickly ended up with a cucumber puree and had to start over with the grating blade.
The grated cucumbers are then mixed with pickling and canning salt and allow to sit for two hours. This draws a great deal of moisture from the cucumbers. Pickling and canning salt can be used like table salt. The only difference is there are no additives like iodine or anti-clumping agents. For pickling and canning the anti-clumping agents are not water soluble and will result in a cloudiness in the jar once your food is canned.
The salted cucumbers are then drained and mixed with the seasoning packet, vinegar, and sugar. Cucumbers are mostly water, treating them with salt removed slightly over a quart of water from the cucumbers.
The mixture is brought up to just under a boil and allowed to simmer for ten minutes. The relish is then loaded into the canning jars and processed in a hot water bath. Normally food in pint jars processed in a hot water bath only require ten minutes of processing time, the instructions provided on the seasoning packet required fifteen minutes, remove from heat, and let the jars remain in the hot water an additional five minutes.
This was my first time making sweet relish so I am looking forward to trying some of it. The relish will be ready to eat after 24 hours so I won't have to wait long. One thing I would do differently the next time is to cut the cucumbers up into spears before running them through the food processor. This would result in the cucumbers being cut into smaller pieces, but that's for next time.
