Standard sweet pickle relish is made from chopped cucumbers, onions, and bell peppers, pickled in a mixture of vinegar and sugar with spices like mustard seeds and celery seeds. That’s the classic version you’ll find on hot dogs across North America, but “relish” is actually a broad category of chopped, pickled vegetables that varies widely by region and style.
The Core Ingredients
A typical homemade sweet relish starts with four cups of deseeded, chopped cucumbers as the base, mixed with about two cups of onions and a cup each of green and red bell peppers. These vegetables get salted and left to sit, which draws out excess moisture and gives the final product its signature crunch rather than a soggy texture.
The pickling liquid is where the sweet-and-sour flavor comes from: roughly two cups of cider vinegar combined with three and a half cups of sugar. That’s a lot of sugar relative to the vegetables, which is why even a one-ounce serving of sweet relish contains about 4 grams of sugar and around 273 milligrams of sodium. If you’re watching salt intake, that single spoonful on your hot dog accounts for roughly 12% of the daily recommended limit.
Mustard seeds and celery seeds are the two spices that give relish its distinctive flavor beyond the sweet-sour base. Some recipes also include red chile flakes for heat, though that’s a matter of personal preference. Turmeric often makes an appearance too, contributing the bright yellow-green color associated with classic deli relish.
How Commercial Relish Differs
Store-bought relish follows the same basic formula but adds a few industrial ingredients to keep it shelf-stable and consistent. The cucumbers are first preserved in salt brine (called “salt stock”), then desalted and machine-diced into uniform cubes between 3.2 and 4.6 millimeters. For sweet relish specifically, those cubes are dewatered first to prevent the finished jar from becoming too syrupy, then blended with high-strength corn syrup or sugar.
Preservatives like sodium benzoate and potassium sorbate are common in commercial versions. Xanthan gum is permitted as a thickener at low levels to keep the texture from separating in the jar. Turmeric serves double duty as both a flavoring and a natural coloring agent, and bits of red bell pepper are typically added to create those small flecks of color. Some brands pasteurize the relish by heating it to around 71 to 74°C before hot-filling the jars, while others rely on chemical preservatives instead.
Dill Relish vs. Sweet Relish
The two most common styles in American grocery stores use the same base vegetables but differ in their seasoning. Sweet relish leans heavily on sugar, producing the tangy-sweet flavor most people associate with the condiment. Dill relish replaces much of that sugar with dill weed and dill seed, along with garlic, and uses a more straightforward vinegar brine. The result tastes closer to a chopped dill pickle. Dill relish tends to be noticeably lower in sugar and calories per serving, making it a popular swap for people who find sweet relish too cloying.
Southern Chow-Chow
In the American South, the dominant relish style is chow-chow, which has a completely different vegetable profile. Instead of cucumbers, it’s built around green tomatoes and cabbage, mixed with bell peppers and onions. The green tomatoes give it a firmer, more tart character, and the cabbage adds bulk and a mild bite. Chow-chow is typically spooned over beans, greens, or cornbread rather than hot dogs, and recipes vary significantly from family to family. Some versions are sweet, others are vinegar-forward and spicy.
British Relishes
Across the Atlantic, “relish” means something quite different. Branston pickle, the UK’s most iconic relish, is a dark, chunky spread made from carrots, rutabaga, onions, and cauliflower in variable proportions, bound together with barley malt vinegar, sugar, tomato purée, and date paste. The dates and apple pulp give it a deep, almost fruity sweetness that’s nothing like American sweet relish. It’s a staple in cheese sandwiches and with cold meats.
Piccalilli is another British classic: a bright yellow relish of cauliflower, green beans, carrots, shallots, and cucumber pieces coated in a thick mustard sauce. The sauce gets its vivid color from turmeric and its warmth from mustard powder, ground ginger, and nutmeg, all simmered with apple cider vinegar and sugar. Flour thickens the sauce so it clings to the vegetable pieces rather than pooling at the bottom of the jar. Piccalilli improves with age, developing deeper flavor the longer it sits.
Making Relish at Home
Homemade relish is one of the simpler canning projects you can take on. The basic process involves chopping your vegetables finely (a food processor works, though hand-chopping gives you more control over texture), salting them for a few hours to pull out moisture, then simmering everything in your vinegar-sugar-spice mixture for 10 to 20 minutes. The short cook time softens the vegetables slightly while keeping some crunch intact.
The ratio of sugar to vinegar is the main lever you have over flavor. A three-to-two ratio of sugar to vinegar produces a distinctly sweet relish. Pulling that back toward equal parts creates something more balanced, closer to a bread-and-butter pickle flavor. You can also experiment with the vegetable base itself: swapping in jalapeños for bell peppers, adding corn kernels for a summer relish, or using zucchini when your garden is overproducing. As long as you maintain a safe acidity level with enough vinegar, the vegetable mix is flexible.
For shelf-stable canning, the high sugar and vinegar content of most relish recipes creates an environment hostile to bacterial growth, which is why relish is considered a safe beginner canning project. Refrigerator relish, which skips the water-bath processing step, keeps well for several weeks in the fridge and retains a crisper texture since it’s never been heat-processed.