Can you can them? Yes. Will you achieve the same consistency as store-bought? Probably not.

They must be pressure canned. They will be soft. Commercial products contain additives, normally unavailable to home canners , to keep them more firm.
Peppers
Hot or sweet, including chiles, jalapeno, and pimiento

Quantity: An average of 9 pounds is needed per canner load of 9 pints. A bushel weighs 25 pounds and yields 20 to 30 pints  an average of 1 pound per pint.

Quality: Select firm yellow, green, or red peppers. Do not use soft or diseased peppers.

Procedure:

Caution: Wear plastic or rubber gloves and do not touch your face while handling or cutting hot peppers. If you do not wear gloves, wash hands thoroughly with soap and water before touching your face or eyes.

Select your favorite pepper(s). Small peppers may be left whole. Large peppers may be quartered. Remove cores and seeds. Slash two or four slits in each pepper, and either blanch in boiling water or blister using one of the following methods:

Oven or broiler method: Place peppers in a hot oven (400° F) or broiler for 6-8 minutes until skins blister.

Range-top method: Cover hot burner, either gas or electric, with heavy wire mesh. Place peppers on burner for several minutes until skins blister.

Allow peppers to cool. Place in a pan and cover with a damp cloth. This will make peeling the peppers easier. After several minutes, peel each pepper. Flatten whole peppers. Add 1/2 teaspoon of salt to each pint jar, if desired. Fill jars loosely with peppers and add fresh boiled water, leaving 1-inch headspace.

Adjust lids and process in pints or half pints only for safety.
Process in a dial gauge canner 11 lb., weighted gauge 10 lb. pressure for 35 min.

You can use this link to find many food preservation questions.

Here is a link that might be useful: National Center for Home Food Preservation.

Gosh Linda Lou.....that sounds like lotsa work!
I was wondering about just seeding, chopping cold pack like green beans with a little water and salt.
I would be using them in sauces, etc. for things like creamy chicken enchiladas. Texture doesn't matter much.
I know I've chopped, then frozen them before but just curious if I could can them.
Thanks for all the info!
Deanna

You can raw pack them, add salt, but must be pressure canned using the times above. Normally foods are hot packed because it "preshrinks" them. Otherwise you can wind up with mostly liquid and not much food in the jars.
Freezing is easier, for sure.

Freezing works great for chiles.

Jim

I freeze capsicum and chillies. No blanching required. The best thing about it, is that they will stay crisp on thawing.

Deanna,

I have canned many many anaheims by the method that Linda Lou describes. They are just like the canned green chiles you buy in the store. I do blister my peppers first but I do them in mass quantities on my gas grill. I turn my grill on preheat/clean and turn them as they blacken. I throw them in a bowl or a paper bag. Usually I do a five gallon bucket of them. On the grill I can do so many at once so it really saves time. I can them in half and quarter pints since it is a smaller quantity. I love them in chicken enchiladas (I also recommend the green tomato salsa for these) and I use them in my red enchilada sauce (THEY ARE FANTASTIC!). I know that canning them is a little more work than freezing but it is so worth it!

Yep, the green tomato salsa is really good.

And that recipe............for Green Tomato Salsa..............is right there handy, right? So it wouldn't be toooooo much trouble to post it, right?

You guys are Great!!!
:+)
Deanna

Tomatillo Green Salsa
Yield: 5 pints

5 cups chopped tomatillos or green tomatoes
1 1/2 cups seeded, chopped long green chiles
1/2 cup seeded finely chopped jalapeños
4 cups chopped onions
1 cup bottled lemon juice
6 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 Tbsp ground cumin*
3 Tbsp oregano leaves *
1 Tbsp salt
1 tsp black pepper

Combine all ingredients in a large saucepan and stir frequently over high heat until mixture begins to boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Ladle hot salsa into pint jars, leaving 1/2-inch headspace. Adjust lids and process in a boiling water canner 15 minutes at 0-1,000 feet altitude; 20 minutes at 1,001-6,000 feet; 25 minutes above 6,000 feet

*Optional
The only changes you can safely make in these salsa recipes are to substitute bottled lemon juice for vinegar and to decrease the amount of spices and herbs. Do not alter the proportions of vegetables to acid and tomatoes because it might make the salsa unsafe.

Thanks Linda Lou.............again!

P.S. Whenever I see your name, it makes me think of my daughter.....her name is Linda, but when she was little, sometimes I called her Linda Lou! She's 20 now and just moved out on her own about 3 weeks ago. "Mom" is still recovering!

Oh, how well I know the empty nest thing when they leave home. I bawled for days. I told my husband, go get her ! Make her come home ! It was so awful at first.
Hang in there. It gets easier with time. Now I feel that lonely feeling once my grandbaby has been here and goes home. I miss him terribly.
Sorry you are facing this, but it is part of what we have been training them for their whole lives. Wait until she becomes a mother, LOL. It sure changes them and they FINALLY understand why we worried so much over them.
Well, I hope canning your food will help fill the time. Can some for her, too, maybe. Will make you both feel good.

As Jimster suggested, I also freeze mine. I blister them first on the grill, then freeze them individually on trays. That way, I can pull as many as I want out of the bag when ready to use. They are also easier to peel after freezing.
John

John11840 -

I just re-read your post - as I had a later question about preserving/canning my sweet peppers - possibly in a BWB (to taste like the canned variety - but they do not have enough acid for safety).

The frozen pieces of fresh peppers works well - but the taste, of course, is a bit different.

However, I have never tried "blistering" them over a fire first before freezing. In the past, have just prepared fresh picked peppers, cut, and frozen.

Now, I am wondering if the blister process before the freeze, might be closer to the canned variety.

Hopefully, - bypassing the canning/BWB/pressure cooking procedure, to get them to taste more like canned peppers.

Any comment?

Bejay

I am pretty much in the same boat as you. I have never blistered them either.
I use them (skins and all) right from the freezer. I buy sweet bell peppers at a local farm CHEAP at the end of the season and seed them, cut into chunks, and freeze.
Couple of years ago, I ran Anaheim peppers through the food processor to chop really fine and froze them in ice cube trays, then popped them out and put in ziploc bags. That was nice for sauces, etc. Still not the same as canned. I think it's the skins so may try the same thing after blistering and peeling this year.
Here's what I'm watching in the garden and planning for!
Whole plant:
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Closeup:
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Bejay, blistering gives them a roasted flavor. I did some red bell peppers that way and froze them. Nice flavor to add to Spanish rice and things. You could try a few and see how you like them. I did mine under the broiler on foil, then folded the foil up around them once out of the oven. Then, the peels came off easier. Messy job, but they are good. They are cooked, not just raw like when you dice and freeze them.
Nice looking peppers, dgkritch.

A friend of mine gave me this idea and I've used it for years. It's not quite the same as plain saved peppers (freezing, canning or otherwise), but it's a wonderful way to preserve a lot of peppers for use in a wide variety of dishes.
He calls it pepper "paste", but mine's never that thick.
In essence, you use whatever combination of sweet and hot peppers you choose, run them through a blender with a tomato based product such as sauce, spag sauce, bbq, etc.(I use freshly made tomato sauce), add spices of choice like cumin, garlic, onion powder, etc., add (as he puts it) a splash of vinegar, and give it a good whirl. Linda Lou I'm sure could tell us how much vinegar we need for safety's sake. I usually use about 1/4 c. per batch. Once it's done I put it in 1/2 pint jars and freeze it.
I still freeze tons of diced peppers, can hot wax rings and make red pepper spread, but the pepper paste is indispensable for recipes such as chili, enchiladas, etc. I usually always have an open jar of it in the fridge.
Hope someone can use this!
DD

If you are freezing the mixture, DD, you don't have to be concerned with any acid content, only when you process the food in jars.

Gosh, it was fun reading back through this post from last year.
Linda, just when I started getting used to the idea that my daughter had moved out.....
NOW she's getting married!! This summer has been a whirwind of planning. The wedding isn't until April, but still having lots of fun. We bought her dress last weekend.

And to keep it harvest related.....
I am still freezing my peppers, mostly because I'm lazy.
:+)
Deanna

I'm with Jim on freezing the Anaheim's. You lose lots of flavor and much of the heat when you can them. I roast, skin and vacuum seal just like they recommend at the Hatch festival. I still have several packages from last year and they are nearly as good as fresh for my Anaheim Pork Chile.

I just made the Tomatillo green salsa recipe. It is wonderful!
How am i suppose to serve it now? Thank you for the information and recipe. Bolsen

Whoa! Blast from the past! This thread is 2 years old!! Update: daughter's married, I just roasted, peeled, chopped and froze some anaheims (funny how the threads get ressurected around the same time each year...)

Bolsen:
You can serve your green salsa just like any other.
With chips, over grilled chicken, season ground beef or guacamole, add it to burritos, etc.

Deanna

AH, yes, the pepper threads begin/resurface!

Handy for me, as I've got a small but precious little anaheim harvest this year (4-5 good-sized peppers on each of 4 potted plants), and have been thinking exactly about how to preserve them so as to be able to use them like the little canned Green Chiles, only tastier, of course! (We like to add them to pizza, pasta, etc.)

I think I'll try the blister-peel-chop-freeze thing! I've roasted & peeled sweet ones in bulk for the Roasted Red Pepper Spread, and found it worth the trouble (however messy!). It's the least I can do for BF since I was the one who lured him away from New Mexico....

Meanwhile, I'm sure both Linda Lou's and Deanna's daughters have had many more adventures since last year.

(My Dad likes to say "The worst thing about raising children is that you work so hard to teach them to be indepdent... and then they are!" But now that we're all well grown, settled, some of us even approaching middle age ourselves, I know it actually gives my folks a lot of satisfaction to see us be mature. When my little sister (the youngest, at 34) last month, all the rest of us (four other siblings) helped out, organizing a BBQ the night before, decorating the venue, etc., and at one point my mom sat back watching us all bustle about and smiled; someone asked her if it was hard to step back and not do anything but let us do things now --- she just retired recently --- and she said, "No, it's wonderful to see them be so competent!"

Zabby

Next season I am growing Anaheim chili peppers for the first time to use in chili and salsa. Do they need to be peeled? If so, is there a way to peel them without a flame?
Thanks.
Kim

I dried a few peppers just for the heck of it but mine are mostly frozen. I have them frozen in different size pieces and in different ways. Some roasted and peeled...some chopped ready to go into chili or like last night on top of a pizza ... some slices for the top of meatloaf and some ready to stuff, I watched a show on the Food network and the girl stuffed rings that were about 2 inches thick and I thought, good idea so I even have some of those .......I have a big stash of peppers....

kr222 - I think the prior discussion linked below will answer your questions. No you don't have to peel them if you don't want to but the skin gets very tough and usually not palatable. As to how, FAIK, pre-roasting is the only way but it is quite easy to do and takes very little time. IMO you'll be happier with the end result if you do but it all depends on how you plant to use them too.

Dave

Here is a link that might be useful: Do I really have to blister/peel discussion

Kim, you can put peppers under the broiler instead of holding them in the flame of a gas stove. Put them pretty close or it will take forever, and try to get them pretty evenly blackened. Turn them a few times - if they're triangular-ish turn three times, for bell peppers usually four times, etc.

Better to roast them a little too long than not enough, or they're hard to peel and not roasted soft throughout.

You can use the broiler of either a gas or electric oven, but using the burner itself really only works with gas.

Melissa

Another option is to cut a slit down the side, remove the seeds and stem and inside pith and seeds. Then they lay somewhat flat and can be blackened fairly easily. As mentioned, once the skins are all black they easily fall off. anywhere that its not black skinned, its not going to remove very easily. Luckily, there is a lot of water in most peppers so blackening the skins doesn't ususally burn the flesh. I like using pimento peppers as they are smooth sided and have very thick meat.