Home-made Branston Pickle Recipe

This Home-made Branston Pickle Recipe was prompted by my memories of the Branston Pickle that was so popular when I was growing up in the UK. It is fairly commonly available here in Eastern Canada, these days, but it still isn’t that widely known, and I can recall long periods when it was nowhere to be found. It was while living in the far north that I had an idea for a Home-made Branston Pickle using HP Sauce as the flavor base, and the result turned out to be a very passable imitation of the original.

The picture above shows the Ingredient from the back of a Branston Pickle Jar purchased here in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. For the benefit of those readers from the UK, ‘Rutabaga’ is what you know as the ‘Swede’ type of turnip.

My Home-made Branston Pickle Recipe is considerably simple. As you can see in the Recipe Card below, the only two substantial ingredients in this pickle are Daikon radish and onion. My very first attempt, which worked out well, did use Rutabaga/Swede, but I subsequently replaced it with Daikon Radish as it has a similar texture and peppery bite, and because I had a free source for it for a long time. As for the carrot and cauliflower, I could never really identify them in the original, so I have always just given them a miss,

The flavoring ingredients for my Home-made Branston Pickle recipe are very much reduced from the complex components on the label, and essentially consist of HP Sauce, supplemented with additional vinegar and sugar to produce the same tangy sweetness of the original product.

The first step is to chop your onion into uniform chunks. You can make the chunks as big, or as small as you like (Cross & Blackwell does a ‘small chunk’ variety now), but the idea is to have the same size as the other vegetables, which, of course, is just the Daikon in this case.

After chopping the daikon, toss it with salt and leave it to macerate for about 25 minutes or so. Afterwards, rinse the cubes well in several washings of cold water and then drain dry.

Now, heat a tablespoon of oil in a pot over moderate heat and briefly fry the onion just until it becomes translucent but has yet to brown.

Add the daikon, along with the sugar and vinegar and cook at a low boil until the liquid reduces somewhat and the daikon is turning translucent. The idea here is to let the daikon soften a little but still retain some al dente ‘bite’.

Lastly, add the HP Sauce and turn up the heat to a pretty vigorous boil and reduce the pickling sauce to a thick, syrupy glaze. Allow it to cool and the transfer your pickle to a suitable container and refrigerate until ready to use.

As with the original, this Home-made Branston Pickle is lovely on sandwiches (the English favor Cheese and Pickle Sandwiches), with cold-cuts, and especially with cold meat pie.

Print Recipe This Home-made Branston Pickle recipe produces a result that is a very passable imitation of a tangy condiment long popular in the Britain.

  • 2 ½ cups Daikon in ¾ cm. dice;
  • 1 cup Onion moderately coarsely chopped;
  • 1 Tbsp. Salt;
  • 1 cup White Vinegar;
  • 1/3 cup Sugar;
  • 1 cup HP Sauce.
  • Chop the onion coarsely into small pieces roughly ¾ cm in greatest dimension.
  • Macerate the daikon with the salt for about thirty minutes, then rind and squeeze it dry.
  • Pan-fry the onion in a little oil over moderate heat until just translucent then add the sugar and vinegar.
  • Simmer until the daikon is just turning translucent but remains crisp-tender.
  • Turn the heat to high, add the HP Sauce and reduce the sauce to a fairly syrup glaze.
  • Cool and transfer to a suitable container. Refrigerate until needed.