Canning Green Pepper Jelly
Months before I decided to get serious with the food blog, I was on a full-bore canning YouTube binge. I was watching all sorts of canning methods, recipes and techniques. There’s a lot to canning, but it’s also relatively simple. So canning green pepper jelly was going to be easy, right? Right. Canning green pepper jelly wasn’t something I’d looked into.
I worked at a small print shop in northern California years ago. It’s where I got my start with graphic design thanks to my boss and mentor, Joey, who is a close friend of mine still. One day Joey’s mom brought in some of her Jalapeño Jelly, and I’d never tried it before. They served me some on crackers with cream cheese and I about lost my mind. It wasn’t hot- she didn’t like it too spicy. It was super sweet and beautifully peppery.
Last week, I bought some serrano peppers for a spicy dip that I made after craving some heat for the “pub night” I mentioned in my last blog post. They got diced and mixed with cream cheese, pepperjack, garlic, cayenne, chili powder, oregano, salt and pepper. Oh, and I also added a couple leftover marinated artichoke hearts that I chopped. The dip was baked until golden brown on the top and we ate it with some “everything” entertaining crackers. I’m going to have to re-make that and post it. I didn’t even get a picture it went too fast.
After the dip, I was left with three peppers that really needed to be used up right away. I had purposefully bought over-ripe peppers, looking to indulge my craving for heat. I had previously learned so much from my research on canning that when my wife suggested I start canning green pepper jelly, I immediately added the necessary items to my grocery list. Thankfully, my mother-in-law had found a water bath canner with the insert at a yard sale for like five bucks. I can actually can something now, why not pepper jelly for my inaugural run?
I decided I wanted to follow Joey’s mom’s version with it not being too spicy. Deveining the serrano’s pretty well, I blended them up with four green bell peppers and apple cider vinegar and set it in a pot to cook. I let that boil for the recommended amount of time, then squeezed all the juices out using some coffee filters because I was out of cheesecloth. After squeezing, I boiled the resulting liquid with sugar and salt.
The recipes I was referring to called for varying amounts of pretty much every ingredient, so I took a stab at it myself. What ended up, I personally think, was too sweet. I’ll have to play with the recipe until I find the right balance of sweetness, then up the heat to a comfortable level. Anyway, I actually added six ounces of pectin, the recipe I was generally following called for four. After cooking per the instructions to activate the pectin, I minced and mixed in yellow and red sweet mini peppers for aesthetics.
To the untrained eye, everything seemed to be going right.
I poured my mixture into each jar and ended up making enough to fill six half-pint jars. Onto canning green pepper jelly per insights from NCHFP, I allowed them to cool and successfully got all of the lids to pop. On the road to success already! I allowed them to cool down and loosened and removed the lids, checking for a true seal after several hours.
At this point, my naivety kicked in, as they should have been much more jelly-like by now. I kept checking on them after a few hours, and even looked it up for jelly not setting. Some parts of the internet said it may take up to 48 hours to set up completely, so I waited. All my eye-pleasing peppers keep floating to the top despite the fact that I keep shaking them up in hopes they’d set spread throughout. Alas, they never did set. I’m going to call out a re-do with canning green pepper jelly. You’d think six ounces of liquid pectin would cooperate a little better. We’ll try this again, maybe not so sweet next time. If you don’t fail, you don’t learn or progress, I suppose!
Improvise! Adapt! Make hot dogs?
In case you’re wondering, I couldn’t not take advantage of the steaming rig I had right in front of me. I grabbed some all-beef dogs we had in the freezer and tossed them on the suspended canning rack until they were nice and plump. For the last few minutes, I steamed the buns and topped the dogs with pepperjack and mustard. That makes me miss California’s bay area, and Casper’s hot dogs. Now I’m going to have to order some to keep in stock.
