What to do with a bumper crop of hot peppers?

[freemotion]

How about pickled? Then, I use them in recipes through the year. Or dried and hung in clumps for decoration. Or made into pepper jelly, which we love over black-eyed peas and brown rice



Pickled Hot Peppersallrecipes.com
1 pounds banana peppers, cut into 1-inch pieces
1 pound jalapeno peppers, cut into 1 inch pieces
pound Serrano peppers, cut into 1 inch pieces
6 cups vinegar
2 cups water
3 cloves garlic, crushed
1 onion, chopped

Place the banana peppers, jalapeno peppers, and Serrano peppers into a large pot. Add the vinegar, water, garlic, and onion. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to medium-low, and simmer for 5 minutes. Ladle peppers into sterile jars, and fill to the top with the liquid, leaving 1/4 inch headspace. Tap jars on the counter to remove air bubbles. Place two piece lids on the jars. Place jars in the rack of a large, canning pan, and fill with enough water to cover the jars completely. Bring to a boil, and boil for 10 to 15 minutes. Refrigerate jars after opening.

Would you seed them? Are they in one inch rings, or squares? Clueless, here.

Also, can someone tell me about pickled whole jalapenos, which you buy in a can or jar and use in a salsa recipe? My mother can't tell me what kind she buys, she has failing memory. But she does know that she likes those better than fresh in her salsa. So I want to re-create that with my jalapenos. Anyone know?

 

[freemotion]

Bee, I put "hot pepper butter" in the search and looked through all the results that were under 4 pages. There were results in journals and the saved $$$ today thread.....hundreds of total pages to look for the slurping cow in! Can you repost it here?

Pretty please?? For me?

 

[FarmerDenise]

Hot pepper jelly is really good eats. A coworker made it once, using my peppers and I've been sold on it since. It's great on a bagel with cream cheese. It would be great on any good bread with a mild cheese.
I chop the peppers up into about 1/4" pieces.
Remember to wear gloves when you work with hot peppers and don't touch your eyes or face.
I freeze hot peppers whole, no blanching. So far I have had them last two years in the freezer - vacuum sealed.
I dry the surplus, just pull up the plant and hang it upside down at the end of the season before the frost hits them. These will last for years.
I pickle them also. I am not into really hot peppers, but I have enough friends who are and that 's what they get for christmas and birthdays etc.
I use the frozen ones to put some heat into canned salsa, that I find doesn't have enough heat. I just put a whole hot frozen pepper in the jar and let it sit in there. Gives it just the right amount of heat for me.
The heat mainly in the seeds and the membranes, so if you remove them, you will get a much milder pepper.
When I pickled eggs the other day, the recipe called for one dried hot pepper per quart jar. It sure was nice that I had plenty of dried one in the cupboard.

 

[patandchickens]

Hot pepper jelly is also a really good glaze for a pork roast or ham or roasted chicken (or parts thereof), brushed on about 10 minutes before it's going to come out of the oven.

That pepper butter sounds gooooood, I'll be buying peppers anyway to pickle and I may have to try a batch of that too

Pat

 

[Beekissed]

Yeah, free.....give me a little bit, okay? When I get home, later on tonight I'd be glad to post it. Got to dig it out again......

 

[patandchickens]

Here is Beekissed's recipe (free, do you know about setting the search to display results by POSTS not topics? It's one of the last options boxes on the search screen)

http://www.sufficientself.com/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=42438#p42438
you need to go to post #68

It looks really yummy.

Bee, woudl you be willing to go out on a limb and *estimate* what a 'peck' means -- are we talking like a pint, a quart, a half bushel, a bushel, a car trunk load, what?

Pat

 

[Beekissed]

I've actually seen a peck and it sort of looked like a quarter of a bushel to me. It was this small basket that held about 6-8 med. large apples.

Mom says its about 18-20 large hot banana peppers. You know moms......a handful of this, a pinch of that.....what recipe?

 

[freemotion]

Thanks, everyone, for all the great stuff! And, OH, DUH! about searching by POST! Double-duh!

I ran into the grocery store after work tonight and started looking at jars and reading labels. Most of the hot pepper stuff was really simple! All you need are hot peppers and a bunch of chemicals....I think I'll skip the chemicals!

It was very helpful to look at all the different jars and understand some of the recipes here. Basically, what I learned is......I can do just about anything I feel like doing, and it will turn out like some expensive jar of something, but without the chemicals!

The sliced ones looked like some of the seeds were knocked out of them, but plenty of seeds were remaining. So no need to obsess. With the bigger chunks, seeds can easily be removed when using.

I like the idea of a chopped pepper mixture. I think fermenting will lend well to this, as I can chop what I have now, and add some pretty red ones later for a colorful mix.

There were all kinds of relishes, pickled peppers, and hot sauces. Anything goes! If I don't like my current ketchup experiment, it will become hot sauce with the addition of some ground up peppers.

 

[me&thegals]

Remember to wear gloves when you work with hot peppers and don't touch your eyes or face.

Holy, cow, YES!!! I learned this one the hard way 2 summers ago and spent and entirely sleepness night plunging my hands into ANYTHING that might take the burn away. Dumb...

Free--pickle them however you like. If you have banana peppers (sorry, I can't remember which ones you have) or other long, round ones, I personally think rings look classy. My habaneros from 2 years ago I just chopped however it worked. I did de-seed mine (with bare hands!!) and since I had habaneros, there were still crazy hot.

As for pepper jelly, that's more the type of recipe I would prefer a milder pepper for, especially since the rest of the family doesn't like things as hot. For that, I chop it as finely as possible. It is really quite awesome with hot black-eyed peas, a bit of melted butter for saltiness and brown rice. In fact, since posting this yesterday, I'm planning to have it for supper tomorrow night Thanks for the reminder!

 

[Wifezilla]

I like the idea of a chopped pepper mixture.

I had an odd mix of different types of peppers that needed to be used up. I sliced them, added some garlic cloves, squirted it with lemon juice, added some sea salt, whey and filtered water and it is now waiting for fermentation to start. I will use hubby as a taste tester tomorrow.

Like fm, I looked at all the expensive jars of peppers and stuff last time I went shopping. Also like fm I am skipping the chemicals