Piccalilli
Cauliflower, onion and cucumber in a sharp turmeric-yellow mustard sauce, made from vegetables kept deliberately crunchy. The thing to eat with cold pork pie.
Photograph credit: -2020-12-03 Homemade mustard piccalilli, Trimingham, Norfolk (1) by Kolforn · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons · this resized copy is shared under the same licence
Where This Goes Wrong
Dry salt overnight, then rinse. Never boil the vegetables.
Two minutes in the sauce, no more.
A month in the jar. The mustard is harsh until it mellows.
Cooking Piccalilli
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Layer all the vegetables in a large bowl with the salt, cover, and leave 12 hours.
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Rinse the vegetables thoroughly under cold water and drain them very well. Do not cook them.
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Bring 500 ml of the vinegar to a simmer with the sugar until it dissolves.
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Mix the mustard powder, turmeric, ginger, coriander and flour with the cold vinegar and the remaining 100 ml to a smooth paste.
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Whisk the paste into the hot vinegar and cook 5 minutes, stirring, until it thickens to the consistency of double cream.
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Tip the drained vegetables into the hot sauce and stir for 2 minutes only, so they warm through but stay crisp.
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Pack into hot sterilised jars, pressing out air pockets, and seal at once.
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Leave four weeks before opening.
Related guide: Prep, cook and total time.
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What's Going On Here
The vegetables are brined dry — layered with salt overnight and then rinsed, not boiled in brine — because that draws water out while leaving the cell walls intact, which is the whole reason a good piccalilli crunches and a bad one is mush. The sauce is made separately and poured over the raw drained vegetables; cooking them in it is what turns commercial piccalilli into yellow sludge. Give it a month in the jar before opening: the mustard is raw and harsh at first and mellows completely.
After You've Cooked It
Sealed in sterilised jars for 12 months. Refrigerate after opening and use within 2 months.
Good With
- Pork pie
- Cold ham
- Mature cheddar
Common Questions About Piccalilli
How long does Piccalilli take to make?
30 minutes of preparation and 20 minutes of cooking, plus 4 weeks of salting the vegetables and maturing the jars for four weeks, so allow 4 weeks from start to finish. The recipe serves 12.
What's in a Serving
Per serving, an approximate calculation from the ingredient list. Treat it as a rough guide: where a line offers a choice of foods, only one of them is counted; part of the energy comes from foods, or weights per item, with no recorded source. How the figures are worked out.
Your notes on this recipe
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Compiled by Turab
Checked by script for timings, diet labels and nutrition arithmetic. How the recipes are checked. Found a mistake? Tell us.
First published ; last changed .
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