After a review of various recipes for chow-chow pickle relish and learning that there is no set recipe but more a list of loose guidelines or starting points from which to prepare your own. I realized that there is a great deal of latitude when preparing it. All items should be cut or chopped rather small. About 1/4 inch is about right and even smaller is okay too. In my list below, beans and corn do not need to be modified. The simplest relish can contains just a few of the above ingredients. I know someone who only zuchinni squash cut up into very small pieces for her relish which she called “cha-cha”. I knew right away that there is plenty of freedom to make changes – even in the name itself. So, it seems that pickle relishes not matter what you call them or how you make them evolve over time, but the various base ingredients stay relatively the same.
A list of possible vegetable ingredients for chow-chow:
- Cabbage – red or green
- Tomatoes Green or Ripe
- Onions
- Cucumbers
- Squash
- Bell Peppers – Green, Yellow, Red
- Hot Peppers – Jalapeno, Serrano, Hot Chili, Tobasco
- Celery
- Cooked and Drained Kernel Corn
- Cooked and Drained Beans – Pinto, White, or Black
- Cilantro
- Fresh Garlic Cloves
- Horseradish (Louisianna Cajun style)
The base liquid is water, vinegar, sugar, and salt.
Along with these 4 main ingredients a variety of spices can be added:
- Turmeric
- Cayenne Powder
- Flaked, Dry Cayenne
- Garlic Powder
- Allspice
- Dry Garlic Flakes
- Peppercorns – white and/or black
- Dry Mustard
- Celery Seeds or Celery Salt
- Cumin
- Coriander
- Bay Leaves
- Cinnamon
It seems that chutney and picalilli are all cousins to chow-chow and chutney may, in fact, be the parent of the other two. They all contain the same basic pickling “foundation” of water, salt, vinegar, and sweetener (sugar, honey, molasses). The ratios differ, but the base ingredients seem to be the same. There are minor and arguable difference between chow-chow and picalilli. Some say that picalilli has cauliflower and chow-chow does not. Others say that picalilli is cut up much finer than chow-chow. I call these minor differences. Chances are that there was a divide at some point from the original relish. It all may be a choice of name more than anything else.
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