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On Relishing Pickles
I have always loved pickles. Dill, sweet, bread & butter – I like the pickled cucumber. Strangely enough, I do not like unpickled cucumber at all. This also goes for relish, the hot dog’s eternal companion alongside mustard. (As far as hot dogs are concerned, I am NeverKetchup. Chicagoans have more tolerance for conservatives than ketchup on a hot dog) Relish was spreadable pickles, so naturally it would be awesome. Since I have been attempting to eat healthy, I have been adding more and more pickles to my diet, including on sandwiches with various flavors of mustard.
Then one day I was (0f all things) playing a video game which had a cooking minigame. One of the recipes was relish, made with corn and tomatoes without a cucumber in sight. This was apparently a good topping for a hamburger. Now I would never get my cooking tips from a video game, but I was intrigued. What were these relishes without pickles – was this a UK thing? This led me down a rabbit hole of articles. Relish covers a huge range of toppings, including onion relish and something called chow chow, which I previously thought was a dog. Chow chow is apparently a sweet onion/cabbage/pepper relish like a sweet sauerkraut, popular in certain regions of the US. Sauerkraut is another condiment I love, especially with brats or Polish sausages or pierogi.
A trip to Amazon later, and I received a few jars of relish. Onion relish and chow chow are pretty dang amazing on sandwiches, making a worthy rival to the cucumber variety. I have nearly emptied a jar in a week. How had I not heard of this?
So what are your your favorite pickled foods or relishes? Anyone know of a good non-Amazon source for foods not popular in my area, like onion or pepper relish / chow chow?
Published in Culture
Oh, I hadn’t thought of corn relish in years. Now, I’m jonesing for some. I can picture the jars we used to have. Get thee behind me, Satan!
Have you had the Vidalia onion and peach relish?
Oh, man, or giardiniera?
Have you tried WalMart?
We put chow chow on beans.
But the chow chow we buy isn’t sweet, it’s spicy.
A very British thing: pickled walnuts. Not for everyone. I swear that one of these years I’m getting out early enough in the spring to gather my own and try a recipe, just to see how it turns out.
Branston pickle. Originally a brand name that has, like Kleenex and Xerox, come to be used more generically, this time for certain types of vegetables pickled in a certain type of sauce.
Both of the above are staples of the “pub lunch,” and will appear on the plate along with–say–a ham sandwich and a chunk of nice local cheese.
I’m also fond of relish’s sweeter cousin, chutney.
Same is true here. Best hot dogs in the area come from Shorty’s Lunch. Eating there is like stepping back to the 1950s. (I think even the grease dates from around then.) Your hot dog comes with (dill) relish, mustard and onion. End of story.
You had me at “I love pickles” but you doubled down with “but not unpickled cucumbers” and topped it all off with Never Ketchup. Are you my long lost twin? I have threatened to write my 15 yr old out of my will as he continues to put ketchup on dogs. I especially enjoy the neon green relish at Portillos but truly love the Chicago style char grilled at Schnapper’s Hots on Sanibel.
The Pickle Guy pickles (bread and butter, spicy, and garlic) here in Naperville, yeah dawg!
Egad! I ran across mention of them somewhere … Dickens, maybe … and imagined some unlikely concoction of nut meats, vinegar, and whatever other culinary impertinences sprang forth from the British mind.
I’d want to check to see if the horse would eat one first.
Naperthrill? I’ve been there!
Yes! Born and raised in the ‘thrill.
I love the title, but keep your sweet and butter pickles. I’ll be having dill. On everything. Except deviled eggs.
I don’t think I’ve ever had cucumbers in a way I didn’t like, but I haven’t had them every way yet, so I can’t say there isn’t one I don’t like. Besides pickled and straight out of the garden then peeled with a bit of salt, my mom used to make cucumber salads, one with tomatoes and onions in a vinegar/sugar mixture, sort of a proto-pickle. Another one had cucumbers in a mayonnaise-based sauce. I think there was something else, but maybe it was just mayo.
As far as other pickled foods…we usually get pickled herring around Christmastime, I’ve had pickled deer heart, pickled deer and cow tongue, as well as green beans and asparagus. My cousin makes pickled black radish, which are sort of a challenge. I was going to bring a jar to a Ricochet meetup once, but luckily for everyone else who showed up I forgot it.
A little pickle relish in the yolk mixture is good.
Pickled eggs?
I’ve never had it with dill relish and I just don’t like butter or sweet pickling at all.
Chicago hot dog relish must be fluorescent green.
A local company has all your toppings for a hot dog packed into a convenient bottle. It’s pretty good.
I take it Chicagoans also don’t eat cole slaw on hot dogs.
It’s not common. Places with custom hot dogs will have it, but not your average hot dog stand.
Yeah, them too. I also meant to add that it’s also handy to keep some of the pickle juice around to drink after those nights where you might’ve had a bit too much to drink.
I’m also a NeverKetchup, on anything! I too, love pickles, though not so much the sweet variety. Corn relish = yummy, but keep the tomatoes away ;) just corn, bell peppers, onion and vinegar, or corn and black bean salsa. I also enjoy pickled beets, cherry peppers, pepperoncini, banana peppers, okra, asparagus, green beans, herring, turkey gizzards, eggs, and pork hocks. A favorite is “California Hot Mix” that includes carrots, cauliflower, celery, red bell peppers, and jalepenos. I love sauerkraut and its cousin, pickled red cabbage, and “gnar-gnar” (sauerkraut with bell peppers). A friend of the family used to make watermelon pickles from watermelon rind and flavored with mint or cinnamon. I’m not a real fan of mint, but the cinnamon ones were great. I used to like the pickled spiced apple rings, but then got a few jars where they were mushy, so that lost the appeal for me, because pickles need to be crisp. @mattbalzer, I would have tried the pickled black radish.
A good Christmas treat is sweet pepper jalepeno jam (or relish) on cream cheese with crackers or in phyllo cups.
@omegapaladin, or anyone else, have you ever tried a fried egg sandwich with dill pickles? Yummy!
Monday night, the Oakland A’s after winning a World Series, family night on Monday’s, for ten bucks you could sit about 10 rows behind home plate. Buying a six pack of 16 ounce cans of Budweiser at a convenience store in Oakland, paying for it without displaying a handgun and sneaking the beer into the ballpark under a coat. It gets better with a Polish Dog, sauerkraut, sausage, on a real bun.
A fan 5 rows below you passes out, people stand up panicked, and then a shout from a fan behind you; Sit down, he’ll be okay. Priceless.
Candlestick Park, a high foul ball escapes the screen. A fan in the second deck empties a paper bag filled with plastic baseballs. Fans can’t tell the real ball from the plastic balls. Who say’s a baseball game is boring? Not me.
You beat me to it. I know I am a heretic because I don’t like pickles, onions, or mustard. Hot Giardiniera, on the other hand, is awesome. Not just on sausages, it’s also a great way to spice up some pasta if you would like some heat.
My wife went to the local market last night, and they didn’t have corn relish. 😖
I went yesterday. They had no kryptonite green Chicago-style relish. They had at least a dozen varieties of sweet relish, and a variety of sizes. They had one variety of dill relish, and one of corn relish. I got the dill relish, because the corn relish came in a pathetically small size.
Amazon and Wal-Mart seem to have plenty of varieties available, but I’m not going to those extremes yet.
Amazon may be extreme, but you might want to rethink Walmart. I’ve been buying .22LR for $0.07/round there.
Nah, I just meant that I might have to leave home and drive the mile to Wally World. 😆 Wouldn’t want to go out in public or anything.