IMHO pickled peppers would not be appealing in chili. They would retain too much of the vinegar brine flavoring. I've had good luck with freezing peppers, usually whole though I will dice sweet peppers to add to various recipes (including chili) through the year. You could also look at drying some of the peppers. Its hard to dry naturally in the South (all rise) due to the humidity but I get good results with my dehydrator. I plan on doing all 3 this year - pickling peppers for hot dogs later, freezing the majority of the harvest and drying the rest.

I agree that pickled peppers are probably not very good for chili. In Mexico, pickled jalapeños are used a lot as a condiment, e.g. with roasted chicken (or in texmex food, e.g. to top nachos). They taste fine after 4 months. However, I don't know how well pickling works with other types of pepper.

Dry them in a dehydrator and grind them into powder, You can get a lot of chiles in a used 4 oz spice jar and they keep for a couple years before losing heat.

1 tsp = 1 habanero

I pickled mine last year and am still eating them now. Well, not RIGHT NOW but...

They go great with a cold beer.

No one has mentioned making hot sauce which is yet another alternative. It takes quite a few peppers to make a batch or two of hot sauce.
Canning many jars of salsa and chili sauce for the colder months is also a good idea. You can never have too much salsa.

"My question for the group is: What do pickled peppers taste like after say 4 months storage in the can?"
I have been pickling Thai Dragon peppers for many, many years. I place them in Mason Jars not "cans". I've eaten peppers out of the jar up to 2 years after jarring them (and that's NOT using a hot bath). The peppers still tasted fresh and were crunchy.
Another method of jarring peppers is in oil. Many of my Italian friends (from the 'ole country) use oil OR vinegar as a medium of storage.

A tip on freezing peppers: Wash and dry the peppers ASAP after picking. Dry peppers will not readily form ice crystals and cause freezer burn.
An improved technique I use is to vacumm seal my peppers after drying b/4 freezing. I also dry and grind loads of peppers into flakes and powder for use throughout the year.

Another way I use up peppers is to place them on frozen cheeze pizza's when I cook them. You end up w/ one addition topping and it's fresh.

It is importatn to note after Rhody's post that canning in oil is very dangerous and does nothing to prevent very bad bacteria from growing. It should be avoided. Any canning should be done with a hot water bath and must have something added to make the solution fairly acidic (5% vinegar), due to peppers themselves not having a low enough pH.

A better bet it to dry the peppers, adding them to chili will cause them to rehydrate and they will not have lost any noticable heat or flavor. Freezing them is a good way to ensure that they will still be crunchy once they are thawed, but the peppers won't last as long.

I myself don't practice jarring in oil because of the potential risks. But Italian friends of mine (from Calabria) use this method in conjunction w/ fish (anchovies).
Sweet or hot Banana peppers are placed in vinegar and herbs for 2-3 days; drained, then stuffed w/ anchovies and placed in quality imported olive oil. It's important to have no air pockets in the jar. They are then stored in cold cellars.

Being of Portuguese descent, I enjoy anchovies (as I do w/ most seafood) and have eaten these stuffed peppers when the harvest is over throughout the past 25 years (usually when the wine is ready), and enjoy them in good company w/ fresh baked bread, wine, sopressata and imported sharp provalone cheese.
I do not condone this practice of jarring in oil unless you know what you are doing.

"Any canning should be done with a hot water bath and must have something added to make the solution fairly acidic (5% vinegar), due to peppers themselves not having a low enough pH."
This for me is still a topic of much debate because I have been jarring peppers in vinegar and herbs for 20+ years w/o using a hot bath.
This method was shown to me by old timers from Italy who lived off the land and didn't have the convenience of store bought produce or meats. The key is to have as little air space as possible after jarring. Many people over the years including myself have eaten countless jars of peppers processed this way and have not had any ill effects.



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Thanks for the information. I like the idea of drying them. Is there a technique of drying them without using a food dehydrator? I saw a cheap one at Target but I really don't want to have to store another kitchen appliance if I don't have to. I'm sure people dried these before there was electricity.

Rhody,
I'm not trying to be contentious, but the biggest danger when canning is botulism caused by Clostridium botulinum. These bacteria produce a toxin that will cause paralysis and even death in extremely small ammounts (it is also what makes Botox). You keep mentioning that a canner must ensure no air pockets in the oil. C. botulinum requires an environment without oxygen (in the presence of Oxygen they will go dormant) and survives better in the anaerobic environment in the jar. Heating the jar effectivly destroys the botulism bacteria, thus it is possible to can in oil (commercial companies do it).

This is the main reson why it is dangerous to feed honey to babies, so I suggest not feeding peppers stroed in this way to them either.

Also, just because something used to be done and worked, doesn't mean that it is the best way. Imagine if we still used asbestos as a fire retardant.

Here is a link that might be useful: Information on botulism

If you make chili and are planning to can tomatoes, why not to can some of your chiles in the tomato sauce with some onions and carlic too. I made last year this kind of "chili-base". To make chili I have to just add meat and beans to it.

This year I am going to smoke some of the chiles, before dehydrating. A friend gave me some smoked chile powder and it is great seasoning for barbecue.

I pressure can my hot sauce that I make with Puriras and I test the ph and keep it at the recomended 4% I also can in pint jars rather than the individual bottles as it keeps better and when I decant a jar I can transfer to a smaller serving size container.

Before you get your knickers all knotted up I keep my sauce in the fridge after opening and the 5 oz bottles last about 5 days if they're lucky I make GOOD sauce. lol

My recomendation is buy a pressure canner as it's a worthwhile investment.

But when we can tuna here we rent an extra pressure cooker to help We can about 200 pounds of fish at a session (With garlic and EVOO, the best caned tuna you ever tasted!)

My point being that you too could rent one, and keep an eye peeled on ebay.

Here is a great deal on a large canner, also check out the price on the smokers.

http://www.bimart.com/itemdetail.aspx?itemno=600846

Here is a link that might be useful: bi-mart

If you don't mind losing the crisp texture, just wash & dry freeze them seperatly then put them in a ziploc. I also dry quite a bit for power or flakes.

lil Rhody - Botulism debate aside those are great pictures. Now I'm hungry.

opqdan I'll take your word on the precaution and I am sure nobody wants any "death" even in "extremely small amounts";) Sorry, couldn't resist.

Can someone explain the "hot bath" method? I want to pickle some jalapeno's and I keep hearing that this needs to be done.
Thanks

noconn41 - hot bath means that after you put the lids and rins on the jars you place them in enough boiling water to cover the tops of the jars by 1"-2". You leave them in the bath for the time specified in the recipe. This heats the contents of the jars to the point that any botulism spores are destroyed and also creates the vacumn seal that holds the lid in place. The Harvest forum here has lots of good advice and several threads on pickling peppers.

Malon

NENewbie,
Thanks for pointing out my misplaced modifier. Reading that sentence again, I hear how amusing it sounds. Darn it, normally I am a stickler for correct grammer, spelling and punctuation.

Paul - those are great pictures, and I would love to read about your recipes for making pickled peppers.

I use much of my harvest as chili base/salsa. I place it in mason jars and freeze those jars I am not going to eat within 2-3 weeks. While I probably would not want to eat salsa after nine months in the freezer, it still makes great chili. For the winter/spring chili, I use fresh onion and garlic, add four different sausages from my local smkehouse, cubed pork or beef, my salsa base, dried peppers for heat, and yes, I usually use beans. Normally I find that it doesn't need any additional seasoning (my salsa features lots of cilantro), but could add some cumin in a pinch.

HELP!!!!!!! My hubby canned a bunch of hot peppers in a vinagar (and a little sugar) brine this summer and now we have some sort of slime stuff (white and stringy) in some of our jars. He used the same method we have used for years. I don't know what to call it ...He boils a pot of water and a pot of brine. Cleans and preps the peppers and slits them a little in the centers. Using tongs he dunks the (already clean)jar in the water pulls it out. I quickly fill the jar with peppers. He pours the brine in and puts on the seal and ring. Leaves a little headroom. Screws in on and Voila we have peppers.
This year we ran short on rings and reused some. Just rings not the seals. So what's with the slimy stuff in the bottom? We still have some from last year(04) that are still good.

Any help in greatly appeciated as we still have some to go this year.

Ziggy

Ziggy

An old Kodak saying, when in doubt, throw it out.

botulisum,

In the USA, there is 1 death per state per year,

We did toss them,but,does anyone know what we did wrong or is it "one of those things that happen"?

Ziggy

My guess ya did something wrong, OR there was an infection that you didn't know about. W/O being there and watching the
event, it's a guess

Byron

To be safe, I use the Ball Blue Book of Preserving (or other USDA tested recipes) - BBB has lots of great recipes for canning and also includes freezing and drying. I find them at my hardware store for about $6, well worth this small price. "The heart of our company is in Muncie, Indiana, but you can find our products coast-to-coast at your local grocery or hardware store, as well as mass merchants, farm supply, drug and specialty stores."

Boo

Here is a link that might be useful: Scroll to Accessories to see the book

I make hot pepper sauce with a combination of fresh and store bought canned peppers. It calls for catsup, sugar, white vinegar, and veg oil. Then I dice up the peppers add ingred. and simmer till hot. My jars are hot with boiling water, so are my lids and the sauce is hot. I fill the jars put on lids and set them on a towel and then cover the jars with wet towels (boiling hot water) to keep the heat in.... I do not put them in a water bath. Any comments or ideas on this method... the lids seal? Is this safe?

Janray: I've seen this method of sealing jars in old cookbooks and I believe that it is frowned upon nowadays. The canning experts over on Harvest Forum could probably analyze the recipe for proportion of vinegar to other ingredients and advise on whether it is safe to can. In the back of my mind however, I remember my grandmother canning all kinds of stuff and living to tell the tale without access to all the info we have now. Luck? Less virulent strains of bacteria? Modern germ phobia? I'm not sure.

Anyway, I recently made a hot pepper sauce using the Ball Blue Book recipe for Red Hot Sauce - I cut the sugar way back and played around with the spices, cooked it until I liked the texture and canned it according to the recipe. The BBB also has a recipe for pickling hot peppers.

Is this safe?

No, I'm afraid not unless you freeze the jars immediately afterwords. Maybe a couple days safe in the fridge?

The Harvest forum is where I go to for advice like this even though there are very knowledgeable people here.

jt

OIL is definitely DANGEROUS. Botulism will grow in oil. Today all oil is a no no unless it goes through a long pressure cooking process. you can always add oil at the time you eat it.

Here is what I would advise.

1. dry the peppers and store as a powder. pretty safe.

2. Pickle in a jar with all vinegar and no water. Drive the ph down. This is pretty safe as long as you use enough vinegar.

3. consider it like a salsa. it has tomatoes and peppers and vinegar. just make sure you add enough vinegar to cut down the ph of the peppers and the tomatoes will come close to being acidic enough. You might also try some dry powder form of acid in the preserving section. It might be citric acid. but I think it is a different common food acid.

here is a pretty good rule of thumb.

fill a jar half full of vinegar and now stuff in peppers. when full remove air bubbles and there should be enough vinegar to keep it safe. This is sort of a trick way to measure them equal. it will look like a full jar of peppers but it is really a half jar of peppers and half jar of vinegar. It has to be because you put half jar of vinegar in first and then filled the jar.

If you like the recipe it will certainly keep a few days in the refrigerator.

4 make a safe vinegar hot sauce and then add the ketchup sugar and oil at the time you want to eat it.

For sugar you can now substitute Splenda.

look into Annie's Hot Sauce on GW. ask in the harvest section and or do a GW search.

You did not list an exact recipe. so I will not make any comments on that. However, if you remove the oil it might be safe to use. then add the oil when you go to use it if the oil is important to you.

i pickle all sorts of chiles in a myriad of ways. ill concur the comments about oil being dangerous and i never use it. i HWB all my chile products in a vinegar sugar and salt brine and HWB a min of 15 mins for pints and 25 mins for quarts.
ive had batches last three years and were fine. the vinegar brine isnt an issue in making a pot of chili as i use pickled serrano and/or habeneros. sugar will cut the wang of the vinegar down if needed.
nacho sliced jalepenos do get soft from the HWB. if you want to keep them in your fridge and not worry about storage just modify a "cold pickle" recipe to suit your jalepenos.

im about to have a bumper crop of "gypsy" peppers among many others and am going to try using some pickling lime to see if i can get them to stay crunchy. they make a product called "pickle crisp" which is supposedly a lot easier to use than regular lime. maybe someone here has used that product and can offer insights.

just because its not in the Ball canning bible doesnt mean you cant safely do it- that book is still the best guide to go by in remaining safe.

for insites on pickle crisp go ask in the GW Harvest Forums or do a GW search.

I've just made a batch of chili sauce tonight, I used loads o chilis with apple, mango and one apple and ginger, blended and then boiled in vinager and sugar, blended again then put the mix in jars. No water or oil! am I safe from Botulism? If I am this is a great condiment you can also use as a marinade.........

Hi,I'm going to make pepper relish for the first time .My question is can I clean ,de-seed and chop the pepper then freeze till I have enough to make relish ? Thanks for the help!

Ok many questions but for the peppers I'd freeze them if you plan to make chili later. Pickled is good but not what you want in your chili. All peppers can be frozen, take little prep, just wash and dry them, freeze on cookie sheet or in a bag for freezing. They last a long time and are perfect in any cooked product.

Yes micky, if you want to seed and chop the peppers then freeze until you have enough that's fine.

The dehydrator is a great tool for saving your peppers also. Powder goes a long ways and there's a certain satisfaction in making your own spices from peppers you grew or bought.

Thanks for your reply ! I'm glad to know !

I have canned hot peppers in an oil and vinegar (approx. 50/50) solution, then processed them in a pressure canner at 10lbs for 35 minutes. Does the pressure canning make them safe or is the oil still a problem?

Hello. I've enjoyed the conversation here enough to join the site! :-) Here is a canning question for the group. I grow HOT LEMON (also known as LEMON DROP) peppers. They are very hot and and bright yellow and have a lemon taste to them. After harvest, I simmer them for a couple of hours, then process them through the Foley food mill. I get a creamy, very very hot sauce. I usually freeze the sauce in ice cube trays and then use the sauce throughout the winter. Friends are wanting some of my sauce and ice cubes don't mail well. *grin* I want to jar this sauce in 4 or 8 oz jars. I hate the taste of vinegar in store-bought pepper sauce. Can I just add CITRIC ACID or plain old LEMON JUICE to the sauce to make it acidic enough to jar? (And just how DO you measure the acidity of a batch of something?) Then I would just have to waterbath the 4 (or 8 oz) jars for what? 10 or 15 or 20 minutes (I'm at 1200 feet). Any help here would truly be appreciated.

I just canned some jalapenos using half water, half vinegar and salt along with some cloves or garlic, 15 min. process time in a steam canner which is like a water bath canner.

If you have never used one, I highly recommend that you get a steam canner. It performs the same function as a water bath canner using steam to create the temperature instead of boiling water. It takes a few minutes to heat up as opposed to a water bath canner which takes hours. It doesn't steam up or overheat your kitchen the way a water bath canner does. It is easy to lift off and on the stove. You do not have to worry about adding or subtracting boiling water to cover the jars without overflowing the canner. It doesn't cost much more than a water bath canner and, I think, it's well worth it.

If you are beginning in canning, I recommend that you do not try to learn from a book at first but have someone demonstrate and show you. Two demonstrations are best before you are on your own; one for the water bath (or steam canner) and one for the pressure canner. Canning is very easy to learn but the books make it seem hard and complicated and very technical.

The Ball book is easy for a beginner because it has pictures and is clearly written with the assumption that you may know nothing to start with. The Kerr book is very good, too but I would start with the Ball Blue Book.

Besides a canner, you will need a jar lifter, jars suitable for canning with lids, a good non-aluminum soup pot (enamel is a good bet), wooden spoons, ladle, wide mouth plastic canning funnel and a canning collander or food mill. The salt you use should not be idodized.

I lived in Oregon for many years and canned all kinds of foods every year, fruits, veggies, pickles, catsup, jam, relish as well as soups, chili and other things that made it cheaper and easier to eat during the winter.

To make the canning really enjoyable, you can order canning labels online (I order from Colorful Image) and have them imprinted with your own cannery name, thus creating your own "brand" of canned foods. And to make the jars look fancy for gifting, you can cut out squares of gingham material and use them to put between the rings and the jars. This looks very pretty and keeps the rings from sticking or rusting on the jars when you give them or put them on the shelf.

To check for safe canning practices, I would get the latest Dept. of Agriculture pamphlet on the subject of home canning. I have an older one but it is not out of date. There are many wonderful recipes in older canning books, like the Ball and Kerr books from WWII (I have them and love them). You can find these at Amazon and Ebay. But you should never use the older processing methods listed in these old books. Use the old recipes but the newer processing methods and times, as per the newer Ball and Kerr books and the Dept of Agriculture booklet.

Very interesting, everyone. The problem for me is the vinegar. The peppers taste so "vinegary" I find them pretty much unpleasant. Isn't there a SALT option? I have purchased pepperoncini from a company called Krinos (lot's of good Greek type stuff) and the brine or whatever is really awesome and not that "wrinkle your face up" vinegar thing. Any ideas on that?

Last year I didn't want my pepperoncini to get too soft so washed the peppers well. I made the pickling vinegar( spices included) on the stove, heated it to boiling, put the peppers in the vinegar mix briefly and put them in a freezer container with the liquid. Too much heating can turn pepperoncini to mush. The frozen product was delicous. I had no pickle crisp or calcium chloride food grade so that was my only alternative. It worked good and the peppers tasted just great using that method.

Ray, the purpose of the vinegar is to lower the Ph. Salt will not do that. If you don't like vinegar you CAN substitute BOTTLED lemon or lime juice.

this has been a very interesting subject. i use my cayenne and serreno peppers in cooking and they dry very well in the dry desert claim i live in. the jalapeno's are harder to dry. thin walled peppers dry better. to dry the cayenne and serreno peppers i string them on thread and hang then around my home. they add color. them some i leave hole and store in a Tupperware and some i grind in my vita-mix. i like to let my peppers ripen on the plant, i do not like green peppers. i think you could dry the jalapenos in a food dryer. i do make chili sauce and salsa with tomatoes. i sometimes put a pepper in my pickle jar. this year i ma going to try crock pickles and i don't think i will put any peppers in with them.
well you sure got a lot of advice on this one.
good luck,
Wiring Man
PS this subject made me hungry for some pepperoncini so i opened my last jar and i am being a hog.

ive been doing a bit of reading on various recipes on canning chili peppers and i think i have decided on a very simple one for all my varieties.

fill mason jar (i will be using 500mL jars) with boiling white vinegar
add one teaspoon of canning salt or kosher salt
add one clove of garlic

do you think this will taste okay?
should i add water to this mix?

I just now finished a jar of jalapeno that I put up in 100% vinegar + spices. I grew them in 1988. 21 years old pickled peppers. Tasted like fresh. I did have lots of dill in the jar. at least one and maybe 2 big flowers of dill with stems in there. only very light on salt. These jalapeno were sliced in half length wise top to bottom. Red ripe peppers should not be pickled unless you intend to eat the red ones moderately soon. They simply go mushy soft too fast.

But pickling takes more jars and I have since gone over to making hot sauce. Basically the same thing. I use peppers and vinegar and NO Water added. always 100% low cost white vinegar. With hot sauce I grind up the peppers in the food processor to reduce the volume and then put into the jar with vinegar. with pickled I put whole peppers in vinegar. But I can get a lot more pepper into the jar if they are ground up first.

I also no longer add spices to my hot sauce. If I want flavor I put it on the food as I cook it and then add hot sauce. It all works out easier for me with no risk or less risk of botulism. However, if I ever make pickles again I will add dill as I like that flavor on pickled peppers and cucs.

I like garlic but I dont use it because there can be some problems with garlic. So if I want garlic today I add it to the food and then add hot sauce later.

I like hot sauce because I can control the amount I add to my food.

Dry hot peppers lose a lot of flavor especially c chinese types like habs. If you want to keep the flavor of chinese you should consider frozen or pickled or hot sauce which is my solution.

When ready to use a jar of pickles preserved in vinegar will soaking the pickles in water leach out some of vinegar to make the pickle less sour?

Note: preserved meaning that the pickle (peppers) were processed according to proper processing times in a water bath.

Dune

Hello,
I live in a small town that has famous peppers canned in oil "Old Italians recipe". They have been doing it for years and everyone in town cans in oil. But after reading everything about canning in oil I am getting nervous as I have canned in oil as well. I have a couple of questions, the process goes like this, clean, slice and let dry, some do not let the peppers dry. Fill pot with oil, fill with peppers, bring to boil, cook until you can just barley punch with fork, prep jars and lids like normal, put in small amount of salt, fill jar with peppers, top off with oil, 1" head space. Question is by using oil that boils at 425 - 450 degrees is that enough to kill all the bad stuff. One more thing to note is a processing company has started production of the family peppers but they also add Sodium Acid Sulfate to raise ph. Last question can I do the process above put use a pressure canner?

Thanks,

Carl

Carl,

I'm not going to pretend to be an authority on safe canning practices but, the use of oil sets of red flags for me. Low acid vegetables (peppers) canned in oil provides the perfect environment for Botulism from what I've read. I think you're wise to be nervous.

If I may, I'd like to suggest that you post your question over on the Harvest Forum (link below). There are lots of good folks over there with loads of experience, some are certified instructors in safe food preservation.

FWIW,

Bill

Here is a link that might be useful: Harvest Forum

I have been water bath canning green chilies for more than a decade. I roast them, peel them, and either dice them before putting them into hot sterilized jars or carefully fold them into wide mouth jars. I add white wine vinegar to each jar, generally covering the chilies. Then I seal them and process them in a water bath for 20 minutes. I have them on my shelves right now--in varying size jars. The vinegar is needed but when I use them for cooking--I never taste the vinegar whatsoever! I add them to stews, casseroles, and pasta. I have used them for breakfasts, lunches and suppers. I have put whole chilies in grilled cheese sandwishes. If the vinegar were going to leave a taste--I would have found it. If they don't seal or they turn black--discard immediately. However, that happens rarely.