Marshland's Chili

Marshland’s chili sauce is a vintage tomato-based relish, not the meat-and-bean chili most people picture. It’s a long-simmered preserve of ripe tomatoes, celery, green bell peppers, and ginger root, sweetened with sugar and balanced by apple cider vinegar and a sachet of pickling spices.

This style of chili sauce was a Maritime and New England staple in the early 1900s, served alongside cold meats, ham, roast beef, sandwiches, and cheese plates. The flavor reads as a sweeter, gingery cousin of piccalilli, with a depth that tomato ketchup can’t match.

Use a heavy preserving kettle (or a Dutch oven) and simmer until the sauce thickens noticeably. The recipe doesn’t give an exact time because it depends on tomato water content; expect 60 to 90 minutes of low simmering, with occasional stirring to prevent scorching.

Ginger sticks (whole ginger pieces) infuse the sauce during cooking and get pulled before canning. Don’t grate the ginger; you want the flavor without the fibrous bits in the finished sauce.

Kitchen Tips

• Score the bottom of each tomato with an X, drop in boiling water for 30 seconds, then ice; the skins slip off cleanly.
• Tie the pickling spices in a square of cheesecloth so you can lift them out at the end (along with the ginger sticks).
• Sterilize jars in boiling water for 10 minutes before filling. The hot fill plus a hot water bath seal is what makes this shelf-stable.
• For long-term storage, process filled jars in a boiling water bath for 15 minutes, then check seals after cooling.

Variations

• Add a chopped jalapeño or a teaspoon of red pepper flakes for a spicy heat.
• Use heirloom tomatoes (a mix of red, yellow, and orange) for a more complex flavor and color.
• Set 2 cups of finished sauce with 1 tablespoon plain gelatin (bloomed in ¼ cup cold water) for the traditional jellied squares variation.