Green Tomato Relish

As the growing season comes to an end, there is often green tomatoes left on the vines that will not ripen before the first frost. Tomatoes will not ripen off of the vine, so what is one to do with the green tomatoes left at the end of the season? One solution is to make green tomato relish. Most of Mum's recipes were in her head, and although I would help I never really noted exactly what we always did; and so it was with the green tomato relish. When I first decided to make green tomato relish without Mum's help, I just decided to mix various peppers from the garden along with some yellow onions and add a few spices I thought would work. The end product was quite tasty.

Green tomatoes will not have has much juice, and they are firmer with a thicker peel than ripe tomatoes. For the relish we will be chopping the green tomatoes instead of puréeing them as we did when making salsa. We do not bother with peeling the tomatoes before chopping them; simply remove the stem end and slice them into chunks.

Green tomatoes ready for dicing

To dice the tomatoes we will use a food processor with the chopping blade installed. My sister has often mention that she does not like to use a food processor for dicing because it over dices the food. If one understands how to use the food processor properly, it is easy to control how fine it will diced the food. I think I failed to convince my sister; however, I thought I would take the time to explain to my readers how to use a food processor for dicing without turning the food to mush.

When using a food processor for dicing, place the speed control on the lowest setting. We will use the pulse feature of the processor instead of the constant on switch to help control how fine we dice. Finally, it is important not to overload the hopper when dicing. If you have a lot in the hopper, you will have to over dice part of the food in order to dice all of the food. Pulse the power switch in short bursts paying attention to the size of the diced food in the hopper. When the food is at the proper size, stop and unload the hopper; add more food and continue until all have been processed.

Coarse diced green tomatoes

I still have peppers growing in the back veggie garden, although they will need to be picked as we move into late October. I decided to just add a mixture of sweet peppers and some hot to add a bit of spice to my relish. Along with the peppers I added some yellow onions.

Various peppers from my veggie garden

Wash the peppers and remove any seeds. Slice the peppers into chucks and use the food processor to dice them. We want to dice the peppers a little finer than we did with the green tomatoes. I like to use a mixture of peppers of different colours to add a variety that will make the relish more pleasing to the eye. I also added four jalapeños to the sweet peppers for a more spicy relish. When you are finished with the peppers, dice some yellow onions; caution, don't over do the yellow onions as they have a stronger flavour than sweet onions and can overpower the relish.

Diced peppers (add diced onions as well)

Once everything is diced, mix the tomatoes, peppers, and onions together in a large pot. I added 250 ml (1cup) of apple cider vinegar and 125 ml (1/2 cup) of sugar; the sugar will cut the acidic taste of the vinegar. If you like a sweeter relish, add more sugar. To the mixture I also added black pepper and garlic to taste. Allow the mixture to cook at simmer for about 20 to 30 minutes. You don't want to overcook the mixture as you want it to be al dente. Since my relish is a low acid food; the amount of vinegar I added was a lot less than most recipes that do the water bath processing, I will process the jars in my pressure bottler. For instructions on pressure bottling, read my post on making salsa [Click Here]. The jars will need to be processed at 69 kpa (10 psi) for 10 minutes.

The final product

Eight pots of green tomato relish

I ended up with eight pots of green tomato relish and my recipe tasted close to the way Mum use to make it. I had a bit left over from filling the jars and I had it on a beef bugger for dinner; it was delicious. This relish is good as a topping on hotdogs and beef buggers, as well as a topping on beans and other veggie sides.