Saturday, October 6, 2012

Mexican Carrot Relish



I felt in love with this relish many years ago, when I first tried them at OKC's local Mexican restaurant "Ted's Cafe Escondido". Never thought about making these at home until about a month ago. Why!??? Why did I not tried to make this earlier? No clue.
Anyways, these carrots (and onions) are delicious. There are bunch of recipes online, but each one of them either has too much vinegar, or not enough sugar, or doesn't make much sense to me. So here is a version of the relish that works for me. By the way, 1:1 carrot onion ratio is not a must. If you like carrots more - have more carrots, if you prefer onions - take more onions. If you like it spicier - have more jalapenos.

1 pound of carrots
1 pound of white onions
2 jalapenos
3-4 cloves of garlic
 1 tsp oregano

For marinade: 
3 cups of water
1/3 cup of apple cider vinegar
1 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp salt


Slice carrot into rounds. Not too bit, not too small, about the size of 5-6 quarters put together.
Slice onions, not too finely, kinda matching the  size of your carrots. Do not mix with carrots!!! We'll need to boil carrots first!  
Actually... even though this is my fourth time making these, I got so excited about taking pictures of cut veggies, that I forgot about this step... had to dig out carrots later to boil them... 

Slice the jalapenos. And garlic. 

Put carrots in the pot, add enough water to cover the carrots and bring to boil. Cook for about 4-5  minutes. Of course cooking time will depend on how thin your carrots are. It's probably better to under-cook them than overcook them. Drain the carrots and mix with onions and jalapenos and garlic. Add the oregano.

Now combine water, salt and sugar and bring to boil. Turn off the heat and add vinegar. Pour over carrot mix and let cool on the kitchen counter.


Once the relish cooled off, transfer into jars (or not) and refrigerate. It pretty much is ready next day. The more they marinate, the better they taste though. I wasn't able to check how long these will stay fresh in refrigerator since I usually finish a jar in a week... But I'm sure it'll stay good for at least couple of weeks, maybe longer.

Enjoy.


2 comments:

  1. Very good!! Have eaten at Ted' my entire life, and this is spot-on. Thank you for the post.

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  2. This is amazing. The only two Ted’s in our area (KC) closed and I was missing this so much. I’m not sure how it tastes after it marinades, because it only lasted about an hour. 😀. Maybe the next batch can marinade......

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