About our Publix Deli Cranberry Orange Relish
Did you know there’s a difference between cranberry relish and cranberry sauce? Our cranberry relish is made from raw ingredients and blended, but cranberry sauce is cooked. Relish has a fresh taste with a hint of tartness, but the sauce is much sweeter. And cranberry relish is actually a condiment. Spread it on cream cheese and crackers, vanilla yogurt, ice cream and more — the possibilities are endless!
Our relish is only available for a limited time from October through December and again at Easter. It also comes on our Publix Deli Turkey Cranberry Sub and is included in our Holiday Meals, both available for a limited time.
The delicious seasonal favorite even has its own holiday, National Cranberry Relish Day, Nov. 22. What a perfect time of year to celebrate it! There’s something about the tradition of cranberry and Thanksgiving that folks love.
How we make it
Making our cranberry orange relish starts with cranberries. When they arrive frozen at the deli kitchen, they head to the processing room, where we divide them into 2 groups of 400 pounds each to make 1 batch of relish.
One group of cranberries is blended and the other gets chopped. Then the chopped cranberries are added to the blended cranberries, along with orange juice concentrate and a seasoning blend. Then, we mix them all together.
After everything is combined, the mixture is put into tubs and sent to the filler room. Our quality assurance team then performs checks to ensure we have the correct pH level for food safety. Once approved, the relish is transferred into the filler machine, which dispenses it into 16-ounce containers.
As the relish-filled containers travel down the conveyor belt, they’re sealed with plastic and topped with a lid. After this process, each container goes across a weight checker to verify the correct volume of relish.
Then, the container is labeled and marked with a use-by date. At the same time, a high-speed camera looks at every container to ensure it’s packaged correctly. The containers of relish are then boxed up, palletized and shipped to our distribution centers, where the relish is sent to stores.
About the deli kitchen
When the Lakeland, Florida, deli kitchen opened in 1984, it was about half the size it is now and only produced a handful of our current offerings. Today, over 425 associates work at the 135,000-square-foot plant. A U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) inspector is on-site every time we’re making meat products. The deli kitchen is where many Publix-brand deli meats in the service case are processed and packaged, along with a variety of our Publix Deli Smokehouse meats like ribs, sausage and chicken, as well as our Publix Deli salads and dips.
