Sugar substitute in relish recipe?

[earthy_mama]

I LOVE my grandma's homemade green relish but had a look at the recipe and noticed that for 9 large cucumbers there are 5 cups of sugar!!!!! YIKES. I don't use sugar in my cooking or baking & usually find it quite easy to eliminate/substitute healthy alternatives in my baking.

I would love to hear if anyone can recommend a healthy way to make the relish without the sugar? ... or suggest a healthy substitute that might work well in a relish? ...or recommend by how much the sugar could be reduced without affecting the outcome too much? (I'm ok with it not tasting as sweet as we're all used to things not tasting super sweet.)

Thx in advance!

[cristeen]

What else is in the recipe?

If it's a vinegar pack, you can probably remove the sugar entirely and the recipe would still work - it'd taste weird but it'd work. If it's a water pack though, then you run into difficulties because of processing.

As for substitutes... honey or palm sugar are the only two I can think of - rapadura would give a strong molasses flavor. I'd probably try cutting the entire recipe in half, then cut the sugar in half again and try that, see how it tastes before I committed all that energy and food to a recipe that may not work.

[earthy_mama]

Thanks for the suggestion cristeen. There is a large amount of vinegar in the recipe so I think I'll reduce the sugar dramatically rather than eliminate completely and go from there.

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