Sounds like you have been eating well indeed!!! :)

Care to share your recipe for canning pepperonchini?

Dave

Here is the 3 quarts of Pepperoncini I made using NO heat processes. The pickled garlic was heat processed. The garlic is plain, hot pepper, and dill flavors. I use full strength vinegar for both items. You can also see the canning jar attachment at the far right of the photo, and a few peaches I just picked.

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WM: you make me hungry for a BLT. I have quite a few peppers coming on too. I think I'll pickle them like I did last year.

Ks rogers: Those are HUGE garlic cloves! What's your magic for getting them to grow so large?

Magic! Its the hard neck MUSIC type. They usually have about 6 cloves per bulb and its not in two layers like store bought. I first bought the Music garlic two years ago, and was amazed at how big they get. I use Dixondale onion fertilizer on the patch and plant about 6-8 inches apart. I keep the area well weeded, and use corn gluten in fall and spring to stop weed seeds from sprouting. I plant the cloves in about September and had ordered my Music garlic for next year already. Right now, many suppliers are sold out now. THe hard neck types do well in the Z7 and lower, compared to soft necks that grow better in warmer Z8 and higher. Mine send up scapes, a stiff stalk that I pickle in about June. By the end of June the leaves start to die out and then I start to dig them up. They grow between September through July. I think they are the biggest of the clove sizes for regular garlic. I tried elephant garlic, but it never survived a winter here. When they get planted, I put down some bone meal in the trench where they are planted.

well i don't know if if they are as good as they look yet.

the brine was 10 cups of vinegar and 2 cups of water. i cut a slit in each peper with sissors and soaked the peppers and garlic in a gallon of water with 1 1/2 cups of salt over night. i to each pint i added a teaspoon of dill seed and two cloves of soaked crushed garlic. i find that crushing int garlic gives more flavor. I brought the brine to a boil and poured it over the peppers that were packed in the jars. i used a knife to squeeze the air out and topped off with the brine. BWB for 15 min.

i like my peperoncini softer then Ksrogers. i think it is my 66 year old mouth. i turned 66 the day i canned the peperoncini.

if i am still here next year then it worked.

Monday i am going to pick my nacho fodder. that is my jalapeno peppers. i have maybe twice as many as i had peperoncini. i slice them and use the same process.

WM

I have never had a firm or crisp pepperoncini until I elimintated the bring heating step and any heat processing. They are just too delicate and thin skinned to hold up to that. About the only part of the peppers that have any texture is the seed area, beut even for that, the skins open and seeds leak out throughout the jars. Store bought ones are exactly the same texture as mine. This years pepperoncini are quite mild, and its the second year I found them not to have much hot even after they are pickled. I recall the name 'Robustini' being a bit hotter, and might grow those next year. There is also a Greek one, and all of them look the same. After 2 years of storage the pepperoncini do soften and are usually still firm enough that they don't fall apart.

Ken - do you store your peppers on a shelf or in the refrigerator? I was curious since you did not heat process them.

Nancy

Because I use full strength 5% vinegar and pickling salt, with no added water, and vacuum processes these, they can be stored on the shelf, and keep well up to two years. I pierce each pepper and a batch of them is placed in the larger FS canister where the air is pulled out of each pepper and the vacuum that forms within, will pull in the vinegar brine. I will pull the vacuum about 3 times and adjust for the loss of liquid due to the peppers sucking it up. Once they are not showing any more bubbles under the pumping, I place them in quart and pint canning jars and 3/4 fill each with fresh vinegar brine, pull a vacuum again which will show a few more bubbles, then I add a bit more brine and do it again. After 3 pump downs in the jars and partial fillings, they get filled to a 1/2 inch of headspace and a lid is placed inside the attachment. Then the final pump down will actually pull a tiny amount of brine out of each jar and fall into the moisture trap attached to the pump so it doesn't get ito the pump. The final pump down is halted when I pull the vacuum fitting off the top of the FS attachment, which causes a small slug of air to force the lid onto the jar. I do this while the pump is still running. They get rinsed off as they do have a little brine on the outside of teh jars, and I do this task in a shallow pan so I don't flood my counter. After a water rinse, I screw on a band and leave it there, as I much prefer to leave them on at all times. The vacuum process I use is very similar to what they do for commercial canning of these tender peppers. Any heat method, even adding a boiling brine will quickly soften the peppers to mush.

I do use a higher powered vacuum pump as shown in the photo. For the whole garlic, it too gets full strength brine, but because garlic is much more dense they get a BWB type processing.