Home-canned corn relish is a delicious, perennial crowd pleaser. This is the relish the guys will always reach for first, because it’s essentially pickled carbs!
You can double or triple the batch, or, cut it in half.
You can start from frozen corn, which is a money saver out of season, and a time-saver any time of year.
This is a tested recipe from Bernardin. This recipe was updated May 2024, to reflect the updated recipe from Bernardin. A change from the use of flour to Clear Jel was made.
The recipe
Jar size choices: Quarter-litre (½ US pint / 250 ml / 8 oz) OR half-litre (1 US pint / 500 ml/ 16 oz)
Processing method: Water bath or steam canning
Yield: 6 x half-litre (US pint) jars
Headspace: 2 cm (½ inch)
Processing time: 15 minutes (all jar sizes)
Sweet corn relish
Ingredients
- 1 kg corn kernels (8 cups / 2 ¼ lbs. Measurements after prep.)
- 200 g celery (finely chopped. 1 ¾ cup / 7 oz. Measurements after prep.)
- 125 g onion (finely chopped . 1 cup / 4.5 oz. 1 medium. Measurements after prep.)
- 600 g bell pepper (finely chopped. 4 cups / 1 ¼ lbs. Measurements after prep.)
- 1 clove garlic (minced)
- 2 tablespoons mustard powder
- 2 tablespoons salt (OR non-bitter, non-clouding salt sub)
- 1 tablespoon celery seed
- 1 tablespoon mustard seed
- 1 tablespoon turmeric
- 275 g sugar (white. 1 ¼ cups / 10 oz) OR 2 teaspoons liquid stevia
- 1 litre white vinegar (5% acidity or higher. 4 cups / 32 oz)
- 2 tablespoons ClearJel
- 4 tablespoons water
Instructions
- In a large pot (about 4 litres / US quarts), mix everything from the corn down to and including the vinegar. Bring to a boil, then lower to a simmer and simmer for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.
- Mix the water with the flour or clear jel. Add a few spoonfuls of the hot liquid from the pot, stir that in. Add this mixture to pot and stir well immediately. Let simmer for another 5 minutes, stirring frequently to avoid burning at the bottom of the pot. Don't try to simmer it down to a really thick relish at this point, as it will thicken substantially when it cools anyway.
- Put in your choice of the following jar sizes: quarter-litre (½ US pint), or half-litre (1 US pint).
- Leave 2 cm (½ inch) headspace regardless of jar size.
- Debubble, adjust headspace with sauce mixture.
- Wipe jar rims.
- Put lids on.
- Process in a water bath or steam canner.
- Process either size jar for 15 minutes. Increase time as needed for your altitude.
- Best after at least a month of jar time.
Nutrition
Reference information
How to water bath process.
How to steam can.
When water-bath canning or steam canning, you must adjust the processing time for your altitude.
For salt substitute, Herbamare Sodium-Free was used.
For stevia, Better Stevia liquid stevia was the stevia used.
More information about Sugar and Salt-Free Canning in general.
Australia and New Zealand vinegar strength special notes.
Recipe notes
- Bernardin says you may use either flour or Clearjel;
- For the pepper, ideally for appearance a mixture of red and green. You can actually use any mix of colours you wish or can get. The red just adds a dash of visual interest.
- Optional: for hotter, you can add some red pepper flakes. You can also swap out some of the bell pepper weight / volume for equal weights / volumes of hot peppers.
- For the corn, you can used canned, frozen, or fresh. Depending on where you live, it can be more economical to buy frozen, especially when they go on sale which happens several times a year.
- If using fresh, you’ll want the corn scraped from about 18 cobs of corn. Boil ears of corn 5 minutes. Dip in cold water. Cut whole kernels from cob.
- If using frozen, put in a large microwave-safe jug or bowl with 1 cup of water, cover and zap for 7 minutes. Drain well, then add to mix. Reserve and freeze the drained off stock for soup use.
Recipe Source
Homestyle Corn Relish. In: Bernardin Guide to Home Preserving. Toronto, Canada: Bernardin Ltd. 2013. Page 76.
Also referred to: Corn Relish. In: Ball Blue Book. Muncie, Indiana: Healthmark LLC / Jarden Home Brands. Edition 37. 2014. Page 86. Ball’s version adds cabbage.
Modifications made:
- Used Ball’s spicing, which adds garlic and mustard seed.
- Added sugar and salt sub suggestions.
Safety check
A pH of 3.65… well and truly in the safe range way below 4.6 upper cut-off. Another safe, quality recipe from Bernardin.
Nutrition information
Regular version
Per 2 tablespoons:
- 17 calories, 143 mg sodium
Sugar and salt-free version
Per 2 tablespoons:
- 17 calories, 3 mg sodium
- Weight Watchers PointsPlus®: 1 to 2 tablespoons, 0 points; 3 to 8 tablespoons, 1 point
* Nutrition info provided by https://caloriecount.about.com
* PointsPlus™ calculated by healthycanning.com. Not endorsed by Weight Watchers® International, Inc, which is the owner of the PointsPlus® registered trademark.
* Better Stevia ® is a registered trademark of the NOW Foods Company.
* Herbamare ® is a registered trademark of the A. Vogel Corporation.
Justine
Hello, I live in Australia so had to increase my vinegar amount. This seamed to affect the overall thickness of the relish. I boiled the mix for longer but was unable to thicken up properly.
Any tips or advice for this?
zermuy
Can I substitute the vinegar or at least part of it with lemon juice?
Healthy Canning
Lemon juice is more acidic than vinegar, so yes, that would be safe. Stick with the same total volume amount of liquid acid, though.
Linda Zillich
Can I pressure can this? If so for how long? I assume it is just for sealing the jars?
Jocke
You don’t really gain anything by pressure canning it. You potentially only worsen the quality of the product. We pressure can because we have to, not because we want to. If everything could be waterbath canned for 15 minutes, we would have. But botulism spores force us to only waterbath can stuff with high acidity.
That said, pressure canning for the same amount of time would technically be safe, with a huge margin even.