BRANSTON PICKLE

As close to the ORIGINAL recipe so far!  Loving self sufficient living.

I love this time of the year the gardens over producing and I get to preserve and can produce for the coming months.  This is a pretty darn close recipe to the famous original pickle that we love and grew up on, the classic Somerset cheddar cheese and pickle sandwich and of course the pubs famous ploughman’s lunch.

All the ingredients are homegrown from my garden except the spices, sugar and lemon juice.  Yes I have homemade vinegar, apple cider and rhubarb, but don’t be too impressed I was actually making wine which turned into vinegar due to temperature variation over the years fermentation!  However I have used malt vinegar for this recipe as I was trying to be as close to the original as possible.

I haven’t used a malt barley caramel flavouring and colouring or the corn starch thickener as shown on the ingredients list on the jar of the original for this recipe but I can see why the original is darker in colour and slightly thicker in consistency.

1 hour prep time / 1 hour cooking time / 10 minutes canning time / 3 months resting time

Ingredients

(makes 15 small jars)

1 generous glug olive oil

2 onions finely chopped

300g finely diced carrots

1 swede peeled finely chopped

5 cloves of garlic

150g chopped dates or apricots

1 cauliflower finely chopped

1 marrow peeled, deseeded and finely chopped

4 apples peeled finely diced

15 small dill pickles finely chopped

2 tbsp tomato paste (optional)

600g dark brown sugar

900ml malt vinegar 

1 generous tsp Himalayan sea salt

4 tbsp lemon juice

2 tsp mustard seeds or powdered mustard

2 tsp ground all spice

1/2 - 1 tsp cayenne pepper (to taste)

Heat a cast iron pan medium hot, add the olive oil, onions and garlic and soften for 10 minutes, add the rest of the chopped ingredients and stir through, add the rest of the ingredients and bring to a simmer, cook for around 1 hour until the swede and carrots are soft but retain that crunch, I ate some of the original to compare the depth of crunch.

To can, heat your jars in a roasting tin in the oven at 170 C / 320 F for five minutes until very hot to sterilise, remove and now pop the lids in for five minutes.  While the lids are sterilising fill the jars leaving 1 - 2 cm headspace, (headspace is the gap from the pickle to the top of the jar), pop the lids on and place all the jars back in the roasting tin and pop the tray into the oven for ten minutes only, this is just to ensure a good seal for storage over the many months.

All jars lids depression button should ping down once the jars have cooled confirming a correct and safe seal for storage, any jars that do not keep in the fridge and use over the next few weeks.