Recipe by Jodie Smith

Old Fashioned Tomato Relish, Two Ways

By Jodie Smith, Product & Hamper Manager at The Gourmet Pantry.

Old fashioned tomato relish is ripe tomatoes and brown onions salted overnight, then simmered slowly with vinegar, sugar, curry powder and mustard until it is thick, dark and glossy. Two kilos of tomatoes gives you about five 250ml jars. What follows is the long method, written down properly, and a same-day version for when the tomatoes will not wait.

Jar of The Regimental Condiment Company Fighting Furys old fashioned tomato relish

Makes about 5 x 250ml jars. Prep 30 minutes, plus overnight standing. Cook 2 hours.

What actually makes it old fashioned

Three things, and none of them are difficult. The overnight salt pulls water out of the tomatoes and onions before they ever hit the pan, so you spend two hours reducing flavour instead of four hours boiling off liquid. A wide pan rather than a tall one gives that steam somewhere to go. And the flour and mustard slurry stirred through at the end is what gives relish its spoonable body, the thing that separates it from a loose tomato sauce.

The fourth thing is patience, which is not a technique. Relish is harsh straight off the stove, all vinegar and edges. Four weeks in a dark cupboard and it settles into itself.

Two ways, and how to choose

The long way is the method in the old Country Women's Association cookbooks: salt overnight, simmer in two stages, seal hot. It keeps for a year and tastes darker and rounder. The numbered method further down is that one.

The quick way uses the same ingredients on a shorter clock. Salt the tomato and onion for 1 hour rather than overnight, drain hard and press the water out, then cook in the widest pan you own at a confident simmer and skip the flour slurry, reducing it until thick instead. It comes out fresher and redder, with more tomato and less caramel, and it lives in the fridge from the start rather than the cupboard.

There is a third option, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. We sell the Fighting Furys tomato relish from The Regimental Condiment Company range, and it is the jar we open when nobody has made anything. More on that after the method.

Ingredients

For the relish
2kg	ripe tomatoes, the softer and cheaper the better
500g	brown onions, peeled and sliced as thinly as you can manage
2 tbsp	cooking salt, for the overnight salting
500ml	white vinegar, plus 2 tbsp extra for the slurry
500g	white sugar
For the spice slurry
2 tsp	curry powder
2 tsp	dry mustard powder
1 tsp	cayenne pepper, optional
2 tbsp	plain flour
To finish and to serve
1 tbsp	TRCC Caramelised Classic Balsamic, optional, stirred through off the heat
	sharp cheddar, cold roast meat and crackerthins
	5 clean 250ml jars with new lids

Nothing in the main list is precious. Malt vinegar instead of white gives a darker, more English relish. Brown sugar in place of half the white deepens the colour and takes some of the sweetness off. Roma tomatoes hold their shape and give a chunkier result; a soft, overripe field tomato collapses into something smoother, which is what most people picture when they think of relish. The one substitution we would argue against is cutting the sugar: it is doing preserving work, not just seasoning.

The balsamic at the end is optional and slightly cheeky, but a tablespoon stirred in off the heat rounds off the vinegar bite without waiting a month for it. We stock it in our gourmet condiments range. The rest of this list is a supermarket shop, and we would rather say so than pretend otherwise.

Method

Bring a large pot of water to the boil. Cut a small cross in the base of each tomato, drop them in for 30 seconds, then lift them into cold water. The skins will slip off.
Chop the peeled tomatoes roughly. Slice the onions thinly.
Layer the tomato and onion in a large bowl, scattering the salt through as you go. Cover and leave overnight, or at least 4 hours.
Tip the lot into a colander and drain well. Do not rinse it. That salt is seasoning now.
Put the drained tomato and onion in a wide, heavy based pan with the 500ml of vinegar. Bring to the boil, then simmer uncovered for 45 minutes, until the onion is soft and translucent.
Add the sugar and stir until every grain has dissolved before the pan comes back to the boil.
Simmer for another 45 to 60 minutes, stirring more often as it thickens, until the relish has darkened and dropped by about a third.
Mix the curry powder, mustard powder, cayenne and flour with the extra 2 tablespoons of vinegar to a smooth, lump free paste.
Stir the paste through the relish and simmer for a final 10 to 15 minutes.
Test it. Draw a wooden spoon across the base of the pan. If the channel holds for 2 seconds before it fills, the relish is done.
While that second simmer is going, wash the jars in hot soapy water and dry them in a 120°C oven for 15 minutes. Simmer the lids for 5 minutes.
Ladle the hot relish into the hot jars, leaving 5mm at the top, and seal straight away. Label with the date. If a lid has not pulled down as the jar cools, keep that one in the fridge and use it first.
Wait 4 weeks before you open the first jar. This is the hardest step in the recipe.

When you would rather buy it

The jar we keep on the shelf is the Fighting Furys tomato relish, $12.95 for 260g. The label tells its own story: the Bengal Fusiliers were nicknamed the Fighting Furys, their Officers' Mess relish had a reputation across the sub-continent, and visiting officers were known to ask Ooujak, the head cook, whether there was any chance of a couple of jars for the men at the front. What is under that label is a genuinely old fashioned relish: sweet, sharp, thick enough to sit on a cracker without running.

It sits beside the King's Gunners tomato and red pepper relish and Daylesford's tomato chutney on our condiment shelf, in the same room where we pack hampers by hand in Corio. With sharp cheddar and crackerthins, nobody asks which pan it came out of. If it is the board you are building rather than the relish, our guide to building a cheese board covers the rest.

Questions people ask

What goes into a tomato relish recipe?

Ripe tomatoes, brown onions, salt, vinegar and sugar are the frame, at roughly four parts tomato to one part onion. The character comes from what goes in at the end: curry powder and dry mustard in the Australian version, mustard seed and allspice in the English one. Flour or cornflour slaked with cold vinegar thickens it.

How long does homemade tomato relish keep?

About 12 months in a cool dark cupboard if it went into sterilised jars hot and the lids sealed properly, and about 6 weeks in the fridge once a jar is opened. A relish that was never heat sealed keeps around 2 months, refrigerated. Sugar and vinegar do the preserving, so cutting either one back shortens the batch.

Do you have to peel tomatoes for relish?

You do not have to, but it is worth the 10 minutes. Skins never break down; they roll into little tubes that turn up later on a spoonful. A cross cut in the base and 30 seconds in boiling water peels 2kg quickly. If speed is the entire point, blitz them unpeeled instead.

If the pan is not happening this weekend, The Regimental Condiment Company range is on the shelf in Geelong, ready to go into a hamper or straight to your door. Free shipping Australia-wide on orders over $100.

Products in this recipe

Shop the pantry to recreate this dish: browse gourmet food.

Smoked Salmon Tartlets with Lemon and Dill

By Jodie Smith, Product & Hamper Manager at The Gourmet Pantry.

View recipe