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Tomato Relish
This tomato relish is sweet, tangy, rich, and gloriously jammy, made with just a handful of ingredients and very little effort. It was originally destined to accompany a completely different recipe that spectacularly failed, but thankfully the relish itself was perfect. A week later, it finally found its rightful home beside my Classic British Beef Puff Pastry Sausage Rolls, and honestly, I think things worked out exactly as they were meant to.
Tomato Relish
My tomato relish is sweet, tangy and packed with rich tomato flavour, with just enough acidity to keep everything balanced. I love keeping a jar in the fridge because it works with so many things, from burgers and sausages to sandwiches, cheese boards and cold meats. This easy homemade tomato relish is simple to make, full of everyday ingredients and much more useful than it has any right to be. Once I’ve made a batch, I usually start looking for excuses to spoon it onto everything.
Ingredients
- 500g cherry tomatoes, quartered
- 2 tsp roasted garlic paste, or 1 clove garlic, minced
- 4 tbsp apple cider vinegar
- 3 tbsp brown sugar
- 2 tsp sea salt flakes, or 1 tsp kosher salt
Instructions
- Add all ingredients to a small saucepan over medium-low heat and stir to combine.
- Cook for 20-25 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the tomatoes have collapsed and the relish is thick, glossy, and jammy.
- Remove from the heat and allow to cool before transferring to a jar.
Notes
- This is a brilliant little relish that comes together with almost no effort and makes everything it sits next to taste better. Five ingredients, one pot, twenty-five minutes.
- Use the ripest cherry tomatoes you can find. The sweeter and more flavourful the tomatoes, the better the relish. This is a great recipe for using up tomatoes that are getting a bit soft.
- Don't rush the cooking time. The magic happens gradually as the tomatoes break down and the liquid reduces. Stir occasionally to prevent it catching on the bottom, especially towards the end when it thickens up.
- Roasted garlic paste gives a sweeter, mellower flavour than raw garlic. Either works well depending on what you've got.
- Apple cider vinegar adds a rounded, fruity acidity that's slightly less sharp than white wine vinegar. Don't substitute with malt vinegar as it'll overpower everything else.
- The relish is ready when it's thick enough to hold its shape on a spoon and has a deep, glossy colour.
- I use this small heavy-based saucepan for relishes and jams. It distributes the heat evenly and prevents the sugar from scorching on the bottom.
- This relish keeps in an airtight jar in the fridge for up to 2 weeks. The flavour deepens and improves after a day or two.
- You can freeze this relish in a freezer-safe container for up to 3 months. Defrost in the fridge overnight and stir well before using.
Nutrition Information:
Yield:
6Serving Size:
1Amount Per Serving: Calories: 22Total Fat: 0gSaturated Fat: 0gUnsaturated Fat: 0gSodium: 401mgCarbohydrates: 4gFiber: 1gSugar: 3gProtein: 0g
Please note, this nutrition information is to be used as a guide only. Nutrition information isn’t always accurate.
Serve this with
- Serve with my Classic British Beef Puff Pastry Sausage Rolls for dipping. The sweet, tangy tomato relish cuts through the rich beef filling and buttery puff pastry beautifully, making it a perfect match for warm sausage rolls.
- Turn them into the crunchy topping for my Baked Cod with Chorizo Crumb. The breadcrumbs soak up the smoky chorizo oils and combine with Parmesan for a crisp, savoury finish.
- Use them to coat my Haggis Bon Bons before frying. Mixed with Parmesan and paprika, the breadcrumbs give the bon bons their crisp shell while keeping the centre soft and rich.
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The Sunday Where Nothing Quite Went to Plan
You know those Sundays when you decide you’re going to take things easy and somehow end up doing far too much? That was me last weekend. I was dedicated to rephotographing my Bolognese with Red Wine, which I’d actually cooked the weekend before and frozen specifically for the occasion. I was also meddling with my long-lost marinated cucumber recipe, trying to recreate something I hadn’t made in years. So, naturally, what was meant to be a relatively gentle day in the kitchen quickly started getting ideas above its station.
The Bolognese behaved beautifully. It was defrosted, photographed, reheated, and very happily eaten. The marinated cucumbers, however, did not. They’re still a work in progress, which was particularly annoying because it’s a recipe I used to make regularly. Apparently muscle memory only gets you so far after several years. And because one failed recipe made me feel as though I hadn’t achieved enough, despite having already photographed an entire Bolognese and made a batch of homemade breadcrumbs, I decided I needed to cook something else. Because clearly that’s the sensible response.
Then inspiration hit. Deep-fried bocconcini served with my tomato relish, a recipe I’d been meaning to share for ages. I always have bocconcini in the fridge, and I’d literally just made fresh breadcrumbs. Perfect. Except the bocconcini had absolutely no intention of cooperating. They burst, leaked, and generally behaved like tiny cheese grenades, and after several attempts I admitted defeat. Recipe number two had failed. The tomato relish, however? Oh heavens. Perfect. Thick, glossy, sweet, tangy, and exactly as I remembered it. So into a jar it went, waiting patiently in the fridge for me to give it the dinner it actually deserved.
When a Failed Recipe Is Just a Failed Recipe
I think that Sunday summed up recipe development rather perfectly. Sometimes things simply don’t work. You can research, plan, choose your ingredients carefully, and still end up standing over a pan wondering why the thing you imagined isn’t remotely the thing in front of you. The bocconcini was a new idea, so failure wasn’t especially shocking. The marinated cucumber was more irritating because I’d made versions of it almost every weekend years ago. Apparently even an old favourite can decide it doesn’t want to behave when you try to resurrect it for the blog.
And that’s okay. I think it’s important to say that because recipes can look very effortless once they reach this page. You see the finished photographs, the ingredient list, and the method I’ve finally settled on. You don’t necessarily see the version that split, burst, tasted wrong, photographed terribly, or ended up being eaten quietly in the kitchen because it was perfectly edible but absolutely wasn’t good enough to share. Developing recipes means occasionally accepting that dinner was research and trying again another day.
That’s also why I take recipe research and testing seriously. A recipe should give you the best possible chance of getting the same result I did, not simply sound plausible when somebody strings a list of ingredients together. That’s increasingly important now that so much AI-generated content is floating around online masquerading as tested recipes when nobody may ever have cooked them at all. AI can suggest that something should work. A kitchen tells you whether it actually does. Last Sunday, my kitchen was very clear about the bocconcini. Absolutely not. But it was equally clear about this tomato relish, which came out exactly as it should. Sometimes one success from a day of experiments is plenty.
Sausage Rolls to the Rescue
The only problem was that I now had a beautiful jar of tomato relish and nothing particularly exciting to serve it with. So it sat in the fridge for the week while I considered its future. Then I started thinking about beef sausage rolls, because apparently my brain never stops planning food even when I’m meant to be doing other things. Beef mince, caramelised onions, herbs, fresh breadcrumbs, and puff pastry suddenly sounded like exactly what that relish had been waiting for.
I cooked the sausage rolls last night, and they’re every bit as bougie as they sound. Rich beef, Dijon mustard and Worcestershire sauce, crisp pastry, and a generous spoonful of this relish alongside them is exactly the combination I wanted when I started this whole adventure a week ago. Frankly, I think the relish upgraded itself. Deep-fried bocconcini would’ve been fun, assuming they’d stopped exploding long enough to eat them, but a proper beef sausage roll dunked into sweet, sharp tomato relish is difficult to argue with.
So that’s how a failed cheese experiment became a tomato relish recipe and then accidentally inspired another recipe entirely. This is fairly normal around here. One ingredient leads to another idea, one disaster sends me in a different direction, and suddenly I’ve added three more things to the list I apparently think I’ll cook one day. But that’s also the fun of it. Not everything has to work first time, and I don’t want to pretend it does. What matters is that when a recipe reaches you, I know it works because I’ve actually stood in my kitchen and made it. So grab a sausage roll, dunk it generously in the relish, and rest assured, you’re safe here.
Frequently asked questions
How do I know when the relish is ready? It should be thick, glossy, and jammy, holding its shape on a spoon rather than running off it. The colour will have deepened from bright red to a darker, more concentrated shade and the liquid should have reduced significantly. If it still looks watery, give it another five minutes and check again.
Can I use regular tomatoes instead of cherry tomatoes? Cherry tomatoes are the better choice here because they’re naturally sweeter and have a higher flesh-to-water ratio that produces a thicker, more intensely flavoured relish without needing as long to reduce. If you only have regular tomatoes, dice them finely, remove as many seeds as you can, and expect the cooking time to be slightly longer.
How long does it keep? Up to two weeks in an airtight jar in the fridge, and the flavour genuinely improves after the first day or two once everything has had time to meld together. It also freezes well for up to three months, which makes it worth making a larger batch while you’re at it.
Ingredient breakdown
Cherry tomatoes
The ripest ones you can find, quartered and cooked down into something deeply jammy and concentrated over twenty to twenty-five minutes. Cherry tomatoes are the right choice here because they’re naturally sweeter and produce a thicker, more intensely flavoured relish than larger, more watery tomatoes. This is also a brilliant recipe for using up tomatoes that are getting a little soft and past their best, because the long cook transforms them completely regardless of how they look going in.
Roasted garlic paste
Adds a sweet, mellow garlic depth that raw garlic doesn’t produce in a relish cooked for this length of time. Raw garlic works too if that’s what you have, but the roasted paste gives a softer, more rounded flavour that suits the sweetness of the cherry tomatoes and brown sugar better. Either goes in at the start with everything else.
Apple cider vinegar
The acid that preserves the relish and balances the sweetness of the sugar and tomatoes. Apple cider vinegar has a rounded, fruity acidity that suits a tomato relish much better than the sharper alternatives. Don’t substitute with malt vinegar, which would overpower everything else in a small batch relish like this.
Brown sugar
Balances the acidity of the vinegar and the natural tartness of the tomatoes, and contributes to that glossy, jammy consistency as it cooks down with the tomato liquid. Brown sugar rather than white adds a slight molasses warmth that gives the relish a more complex sweetness.
Sea salt flakes
Seasons the relish and draws moisture out of the tomatoes as everything cooks together, which helps the liquid reduce more efficiently. It also brings all the other flavours into focus and stops the relish from tasting flat or overly sweet.
