It's an original, indeed the original sweet pickle first made in the village
of Branston in 1922. Been in the family long. Since Tuesday. Ah nicely turned neck,
the Crosse and Blackwell markings and inside all those fruity tangy chunky
bits. It's unique. Worth a lot? Priceless. Bring out the Branston. The original from Crosse & Blackwell
Hi and a huge welcome to Steve's
Kitchen, today I'm going to make the long-awaited for Branston Pickle recipe.
It's going to be a lot of fun, it's not too complicated and it tastes delicious, come
on let's get and make Branston Pickle. The original Branston Pickle recipe was made
in the village of Branston, when it was bought by Crosse & Blackwell and it
used to in my mind be a lot nicer than it is today. Now it's changed hands
several times over the last few years, Crosse & Blackwell no longer make it
and I'm going to try and recreate the original Branston Pickle recipe, so it's
not so baby food, not so sort of acidic as I think it is at the moment. So let's
get on. I'm going to put the full list of ingredients up on the screen now, so you
can make a note of them or you can get across to Steve's-kitchen.com, where
they're all written out for you and now let's get on and construct our Branston
Pickle. Place your soft brown sugar into a saucepan, I'm also going to add a
couple of tablespoons of dark molasses just for colouring really more than
anything else and next our malted vinegar. Pour that in the pan. Now this
spice is called allspice, we want two teaspoons of that, going to add it in
there. It is not mixed spice, its allspice. A couple of tablespoons of dark mustard
seeds and a teaspoon of cayenne pepper. Season with a teaspoon of salt. I have
three Tomatoes here, now we're just going to cut these up, they don't have to be
cut up too small, add them in with our sweet vinegar. I've grabbed myself a
lemon from the garden, I'm just going to slice this up into maybe four pieces,
give it a little squeeze, get some of the juice out but I'm also going to
pop the whole lemons in with my sauce. Place that on the stove on a medium to
high heat and we're just going to bring this up to a rolling simmer and let it
simmer away for about 20 minutes to let the sugars develop and to break down the
tomatoes into a pulp. A word on the fruit and the vegetable ingredients I'm
actually using these little crab apples, they're like a cooking apple, they're
sour you really can't eat them but they're great for recipes like this. If
you can't get hold of cooking apples just get a Granny Smith, that'll be
absolutely fine. We're using swede which I think the Americans call rutabaga, I'm
not sure if I've said that correctly, comment down below if I have. But all of
those ingredients, the Swede, the Apple, the carrots, the onions, the cauliflower,
they all have to be diced up very small like they would be if you know your
Branston Pickle and of course we are using dates as well for a sort of sweet
richness to the sauce. Now you can see our sweet tomato sauce here is simmering
away I need to go for probably another 10 minutes before we've developed the
flavors that I want. So we're now going to take that off the heat, the lemon and
the peels were in there to slow down the caramelization of the sugars and to have
a chemical process to create an inverted or simple syrup, they've done their job
now, so we can take those out. An important thing that I forgot to film
but I must make a note of here is when I took the lemons out of the sauce, I
thought the liquid had gone down a little bit lower than I would like so I
added in about half a cup, three-quarters of a cup more of the malted vinegar and
probably about half a teaspoon of salt as well.
So don't forget, I'll make a note of that on the recipe. We want to blend this up,
whether you use a stick blender or a regular blender I'm going to blend it to
a nice smooth sauce. Now that is a lovely rich smooth sauce, into the sauce we're
going to add our Swede, our diced carrots, our diced courgettes or zucchinis,
the diced onions, cauliflower, our tart apples, the chopped up dates and our
minced garlic. Now it looks like a lot, it is going to break down a little
as it cooks. I'm going to give it a stir round before we pop this onto the stove.
Now bring this back over to the stove and we want to bring that up to a simmer
and then we're going to let it cook for about an hour and a half, maybe just a
little bit under. What I want to see is the carrot and the Swede particularly to
get very translucent and start to absorb the moisture and then it's ready to take
off the heat. My Branston Pickle has been on for about
an hour and I think the Swede and the carrot is just about ready, the sauce
down there looks lovely and thick and rich. The next stage is we want to take a
couple of teaspoons of cornstarch or corn flour whatever you call it, I'm
going to put a quarter of a cup of water, give it a little mix through to get any
lumps out and then I'm going to pour it in with my pickle. Now this will make
sure that the pickle sauce gets nice and thick. Now we need to pop that back on
the stove and let that simmer for another 20 minutes.
The Branston Pickle is ready and I'm going to be putting it into these pint
glasses or 500 ml mason jars which I've sterilized of course and we're going to
find out together how much we've made. I'm going to use a ladle to get the pickle
out of the pan and then straight into my sterilized jar, that looks about perfect.
Right the second Kilner jar, whoops I'm getting it over the edge, never mind I'm
sure that can be some tasters. So all in all we got 3 500 ml or 1 pint jars of
Branston pickle. That one's a little bit hot I better put it down. Much as you'd
like to you can not tuck into this Branston Pickle straight away, like
everything good it takes a little while to mature. I would say about 2 weeks and
even longer if you want a really good pickle leave it for a few months but I
know you're not going to wait that long, I'm not going to be able to wait that long
before we tuck in. So I hope you enjoyed making in Branson pickle with me here on
Steve's kitchen. If you've enjoyed the show let me know in the comments down
below and share the love, give this the thumbs up and we will see you
very shortly, take care