Dill Relish Canning Recipe for a Tangy, Shelf-Stable Pantry Staple

A good dill relish canning recipe is less about “secret spices” and more about managing water, acid, and heat. Cucumbers are mostly water. If that water stays in the jar, the relish turns watery, the brine looks thin, and the texture goes soft. The classic tested method solves that first: salt the chopped cucumbers, drain them hard, then cook them briefly in a 5% vinegar brine before water-bath canning.

This version follows the dill relish published in the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving: about 7 pints from 8 pounds of pickling cucumbers, a 2-hour salt soak, a 10-minute simmer, and a 15-minute hot-pack process at low altitude. It is tart, lightly sweet, and closer to deli-style dill pickle relish than to neon-yellow sweet relish.

Use it on hot dogs, burgers, egg salad, potato salad, tuna salad, and tartar sauce. Flavor is better after the jars rest a few weeks.

What You Are Making

This is a hot-pack, high-acid relish. Safety comes from vinegar at 5% acidity plus a full boiling-water process, not from pressure canning. Relish is chopped, so heat penetrates faster than whole pickles, but the vegetables are still low-acid until the vinegar is in the mix. Do not treat an untested “family recipe” as interchangeable with this one.

Two official recipes get confused online:

Recipe	Source	Character	Typical yield
Dill Relish	Ball Complete Book	Cucumber + onion + dill seed, small amount of sugar, turmeric soak	About 7 pints from 8 lb cucumbers
Dill Pickle Relish	NCHFP	Cucumber + red bell pepper + garlic, no sugar, no soak	About 7 pints from ~5 lb cucumbers
Fresh Dill Cucumber Relish	NCHFP / UGA	Fresh dill, peppers, onion, more sugar	About 6–7 pints

This article walks through the Ball-style recipe most people mean when they search “dill relish canning recipe,” then notes what you may change and what you must not.

Why the Salt Soak Is Not Optional

Chopped cucumbers leak liquid after they hit hot vinegar. That liquid dilutes the brine and softens the pieces. Salt pulls water out by osmosis before cooking. Turmeric in the soak is mainly for color; the salt and the drain-and-squeeze step are for texture.

If you skip the soak, or rinse but do not press out the extra liquid, the pot looks “soupy” and jars often finish with solids sitting under a watery layer. That is the most common complaint in canning groups, and it is almost always a drainage problem, not a “bad recipe.”

Equipment You Need

Water-bath canner or atmospheric steam canner approved for the jar size and processing time
7 pint jars (or 14 half-pints); quart jars are not listed for this recipe
New lids and matching bands
Large nonreactive bowl (glass or stainless) for the soak
Colander
Food processor, food grinder, or a sharp knife
6- to 8-quart stainless saucepan
Jar funnel, bubble remover, lid wand, jar lifter
Optional: cheesecloth for extra draining; food-grade calcium chloride (Pickle Crisp)

Do not cook this in bare aluminum or cast iron. Acid plus those metals off-flavors the relish and can discolor it.

Ingredients (About 7 Pints)

For the soak

8 pounds pickling cucumbers
½ cup pickling or canning salt
2 teaspoons ground turmeric
4 cups water

For the relish

2½ cups finely chopped onions (about 1 pound)
⅓ cup granulated sugar
2 tablespoons dill seed
4 cups white wine vinegar, 5% acidity (white distilled or cider vinegar at 5% is a common substitution)

What each ingredient is doing

Pickling cucumbers: Firm, small, thin-skinned fruit with fewer large seeds. Slicing cucumbers work in a pinch but hold less snap after processing.
Pickling/canning salt: Draws moisture and seasons the soak. Table salt with anti-caking agents can cloud the brine. Most of the soak salt is rinsed off.
Turmeric: Color. Flavor is mild in the finished jar.
Onion: Classic relish backbone. Use yellow, white, or sweet bulb onions. Do not increase the amount.
Sugar: Softens the sharp vinegar. ⅓ cup across 7 pints is a small amount. You can reduce it; do not replace the vinegar with more sugar.
Dill seed: The pickle flavor. Seed is warmer and more “deli” than fresh dill weed.
5% vinegar: The acid that makes water-bath canning appropriate. Check the bottle. “50 grain” means 5%. Do not use homemade vinegar. Do not use 4% “pickling vinegar” sold in some countries unless a tested recipe is written for it.

Choose and Prep the Cucumbers

Start with firm, unwaxed pickling cucumbers harvested as recently as you can. Soft, yellowing, or oversized fruit makes dull, seedy relish.

Scrub under running water.
Trim the stem end and a thin slice from the blossom end. The blossom end carries enzymes that soften pickle products.
Do not peel unless the skins are tough or waxed.
If a cucumber is large and seedy, halve it and scrape out the seed cavity before chopping.

Chop to relish size: about ⅛ to ¼ inch. In a food processor, use short pulses. Continuous running turns cucumbers into slush, and slush will not drain well.

Measure after chopping only if you are scaling a different tested recipe. For this one, start from the 8-pound whole-cucumber weight specified in the source recipe.

Step-by-Step Dill Relish

1. Salt the cucumbers for 2 hours

Put the chopped cucumbers in a large glass or stainless bowl. Sprinkle with the pickling salt and turmeric. Add the 4 cups of water, stir, cover, and let stand in a cool place (about 70–75°F) for 2 hours. Some cooks refrigerate the soak; cool room temperature is what the Ball method describes.

2. Drain, rinse, and squeeze

Pour into a colander. Drain well. Rinse under cold water. Drain again. Then press or squeeze with clean hands until the mass is no longer dripping. This step looks fussy. It is the difference between relish and cucumber soup.

If a taste of the drained cucumber is still harshly salty, rinse once more and drain again.

3. Heat the canner and jars

While the cucumbers drain, wash jars, keep them hot, and heat the canner water. Prepare lids according to the manufacturer. Relish is a hot pack, so jars should be hot when filled.

4. Cook the relish 10 minutes

In the stainless saucepan combine:

drained cucumbers
chopped onions
sugar
dill seed
vinegar

Bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Reduce to a gentle boil and cook about 10 minutes, stirring, until the vegetables are heated through and the mixture looks slightly thickened. Do not cook it down like jam. Long boiling is how relish goes mushy.

5. Fill the jars

Ladle hot relish into hot jars. Leave ½ inch headspace. Solids should stay under liquid; add a spoon of hot brine from the pot if a jar looks dry on top.

If using Pickle Crisp, add ⅛ teaspoon per pint (half that for a half-pint) before or after filling, following the product label.

Remove air bubbles. Recheck headspace. Wipe rims. Apply lids and bands fingertip-tight.

6. Process in a boiling-water canner

Water should cover the jars by at least 1 to 2 inches. Start timing when the canner returns to a full rolling boil.

Hot pack, pint or half-pint jars

Elevation	Process time
0–1,000 ft	15 minutes
1,001–6,000 ft	20 minutes
Above 6,000 ft	25 minutes

Those increments match the NCHFP table used for official dill pickle relish. Some Ball reprintings use slightly different altitude steps. If you are working from a specific edition of the Ball Complete Book or Blue Book, use that book’s chart. Smaller jars do not get a shorter process. Quarts are not a tested option here.

When the time is up, turn off the heat, remove the canner lid, and let the jars stand in the water 5 minutes before lifting them out. Cool 12–24 hours, undisturbed.

7. Check seals and store

Remove bands. A sealed lid does not flex in the center. Wash the jars, label them, and store in a cool, dark place, ideally 50–70°F. Unsealed jars go in the refrigerator and should be eaten soon.

Quality is best within 12–18 months. After opening, refrigerate and use within about a month.

Wait at least 3–4 weeks before judging flavor. The vinegar harshness settles and the dill moves into the vegetables.

What You Can Change Without Breaking the Recipe

Safe, common adjustments:

Vinegar type: White wine, distilled white, or apple cider, as long as the label says 5% acidity. White wine is what Ball printed; white distilled is sharper and cheaper; cider is fruitier and slightly darker.
Jar size down, not up: Half-pints and 8-ounce jars are fine. Keep the same process time.
Less sugar: Flavor will be more tart. Do not add water to “make up the volume.”
Dried spices in small amounts: Mustard seed, celery seed, or a pinch of red pepper flakes are typical add-ins in Ball-style notes. Do not dump in extra chopped vegetables to “use them up.”
Dill form: Dill seed is the tested flavoring. Fresh dill weed changes the profile (greener, less spicy). If you use it, treat it as a flavor swap, not a reason to cut vinegar.
Pickle Crisp: Optional firming aid. It does not replace the drain-and-squeeze step.
Batch size: Halve or double only if your pot can heat the mixture evenly. Giant batches that barely simmer are how you get underprocessed centers.

Do not:

Reduce vinegar
Add water to the cooking liquid
Increase onions, peppers, or other low-acid vegetables beyond the recipe
Swap in random “relish vegetables” and still call it shelf-stable
Pressure-can this to “make it safer” — extra heat just wrecks texture, and the recipe is already written for a water bath
Use quart jars
Use oil, butter, or thickeners

If you want heat, a tested recipe that already includes peppers is safer than stuffing jalapeños into this one. The NCHFP dill pickle relish already includes red bell pepper and garlic if that is the flavor you want.

Cucumbers, Garden Cukes, and Zucchini

Pickling cucumbers give the cleanest texture. Grocery slicing cucumbers are higher in water and often waxed; peel waxed fruit and expect a softer result.

Overgrown garden cucumbers can be used if you seed them aggressively. Relish is one of the better uses for them, but they will never match small Kirbys.

Zucchini is not an automatic 1:1 swap in every pickle recipe. Cooperative Extension guidance generally allows cucumber-to-zucchini substitution only when the brine is high-vinegar (often at least half vinegar, and in some answers only in recipes that are already all vinegar). This relish cooks in undiluted 5% vinegar, which is why some home-preserving writers treat a zucchini swap as reasonable — but NCHFP also publishes a separate summer squash relish. If you have a mountain of squash, use a tested zucchini or summer squash relish rather than improvising.

Texture and Flavor Problems

Watery jars The soak was short, the rinse water was not drained, or the cucumbers were not squeezed. Next batch: longer drain, heavier press, and make sure liquid covers the solids in the jar.

Mushy relish Old cucumbers, untrimmed blossom ends, food-processor puree, or a long hard boil. Keep the cook to about 10 minutes once it boils. Fresh, firm fruit matters more than any additive.

Too salty The soak salt was not rinsed off. Rinse thoroughly and taste a pinch of the drained cucumber before it goes in the pot.

Harsh vinegar taste on day one Normal. Give the jars 3–4 weeks.

Pale color Turmeric was skipped, or the cucumbers were overmature. Safe if the seal is good and there is no spoilage.

Pink brine Overmature dill can tint pickle products pink. Yeast growth can also. If the relish smells yeasty, looks fizzy, or the lid failed, discard it. Do not taste questionable jars.

Not enough brine to cover The vegetables were not drained, so they shed water in the pot and then soaked it back up in the jar — or the batch was packed too dry. Keep a little extra hot vinegar from the pot. Do not top up a cooled, sealed jar with random vinegar and return it to the pantry.

Soft seal or siphoning Headspace was too tight, bands were cranked down, or jars were yanked out of boiling water with no 5-minute rest. Fingertip-tight bands only.

How to Use a Pint of Dill Relish

A pint is a lot for one cookout and a useful amount for winter salads.

Hot dogs and brats, drained so the bun does not soak
Burgers and tuna melts
Potato salad, egg salad, chicken salad
Tartar sauce: mayonnaise, drained relish, lemon, black pepper
Remoulade or sandwich spread with a little mustard
Deviled eggs
A spoon into tuna-noodle casserole or fish cakes

Drain it for salads. Use some of the jar liquid when you want extra tang in a dressing.

Small-Batch Option

If 8 pounds is more than you have, the Cook Fast, Eat Well half-batch is the same ratio at half scale: 4 pounds cucumbers, ¼ cup canning salt, 1 teaspoon turmeric, 2 cups water, 8 ounces onion, 2½ tablespoons sugar, 1 tablespoon dill seed, 2 cups 5% vinegar. Process half-pints or pints for the same time as the full recipe.

Refrigerator-only relish is fine if you do not want to can. Cool the cooked mixture, pack it in clean jars, and keep it cold. That is a storage method, not a shortcut that makes an altered, low-acid mixture shelf-stable.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is this the same as sweet pickle relish? No. Sweet relish is a different tested formula with much more sugar and usually more peppers. This recipe is dill-forward and only lightly sweet.

Can I leave out the sugar entirely? Sugar is not the preservative here; vinegar is. Omitting ⅓ cup of sugar across 7 pints is a flavor decision. The relish will taste sharper.

Can I use kosher salt? Use a salt without iodine or anti-caking additives. If the crystals are coarser than pickling salt, weigh ½ cup of pickling salt and match that weight. Volume-for-volume swaps with flaky kosher salt are inaccurate.

Do I have to sterilize the jars first? For recipes processed 10 minutes or longer, current USDA/NCHFP practice is clean, hot jars — not a separate boiling-sterilize step — because the process itself is the kill step. Follow the lid manufacturer for lids.

Why do some blogs process 10 minutes? They are often mixing this recipe with a different relish or an older chart. Stick with the time printed for the exact recipe you are using, then add altitude time. For the Ball dill relish and the NCHFP dill pickle relish, 15 minutes at 0–1,000 feet is the usual pint time.

Can I freeze it instead? You can freeze cooked relish in freezer containers, leaving headspace for expansion. Texture suffers. Water-bath canning is the point of this recipe.

How do I know a stored jar has gone bad? Bulging lid, spurting liquid, off smell, mold, or fizz. Discard the jar without tasting. A broken seal after storage means refrigerate only if the food still looks and smells normal, and use it quickly — or throw it out if you are unsure.

Should I grind the dill seed? No. Whole seed is standard. Ground seed clouds the relish and can taste harsh.

Before You Put the Canner On

Check three things on the counter: vinegar labeled 5%, pickling salt (not seasoned salt), and your elevation so the process time is correct. Then give the chopped cucumbers a real drain. That is the whole method: tested acid, full process, as little extra water in the jar as you can manage.

Once the lids ping and the jars cool, leave them on the shelf until a cookout needs them. The first jar is useful. The batch you make in cucumber season is the one you will actually reach for in January.