One of the upsides to being currently unemployed is a little more free time on my hands (after working 80 hours per week for the last three years, it's actually a lot more free time ;D). I get to coach my son's baseball team now and decided that I would finally plant a garden. So, I've got my essential items in the ground and am waiting for the last freeze (hopefully that will be tomorrow) to put the tomatoes, jalapenos and other mixed hot peppers into the garden. I've never canned vegetables before and have a pretty decent grip on corn, etc.
Has anyone canned hot peppers before (I'm sure someone has) and is there any trick to doing it? Also, if after canning, would it still be possible to use them in ABTs?
Thanks in advance for any and all help.
Duck
Hey Duck...as I understand...canning is a pretty in depth proccess of sterilization and the like. Look on the internet. My hubby canned some plums for jam...and holy cow were they awesome. Never canned jalepenos...but have some growing now...big hot suckers (well not that hot but...) so let us know what you find?
Will do, LQ. I've got a lot to learn! No smart comebacks on that last part, LQ!
Yeah, Duck I'd be interested, too. I had more peppers rot on the vines and wasted more than I ate last year. I wasn't even going to plant peppers this year, but along came the ABT's so they will be in the ground this week. I did find some stuff on the net last year about canning hot banana peppers (which I didn't do, either), but didn't check into the jalapenos.
So far, I've found out that you can definitely pickle them (After all, Peter Piper sure as heck did). I wonder what the effect the pickling would have on the peppers if you pickled them, then pulled them out and made ABTs with them? Anyways, here's a link for a recipe showing how to pickle (they can be done whole):
http://www.thatsmyhome.com/general/pickled-jalapeno-peppers.htm
I'll look more later.....gotta go listen to my little girl read before she goes to bed :)
SD
I've eaten store bought pickled jalapenos, and they were good but they tasted uh, well, "pickled".
Lets see, pickled jalepenos, smoke cheese blend, on top of crisp corn chips, maybe some smoked and fire roasted green chilis, ahhhhh and a Bohemia or Italian Cadillac Margarita.
Should go good with the smoked Diablo Verde Salsa I just made.
Geezzzz Giz...I'm hungry...sounds really good and have all the stuff...well except the smoked cheese (Duck...NOOOO)!! Thanks!!
Did I mention I smoked cheese last weekend?
Ontrack, I did about 15 pounds of smoked cheese today, now have to wait a week to taste it. :(
I can hot peppers all the time but they are pickled. They would not work well as ABT's IMHO.
Maybe you can clean them and lay them on a tray in the freezer till frozen then vac seal? Since they would be frozen they should not get crushed when sealing, I have not tried this but it should work. Once you take them out to make ABT's they will be a little soft but I think it would still work, once again I have not tried it myself but it's worth a shot. I like to save the red jalapenos and smoke them; then into the dehydrator till dry and grind up for chipolte powder. This year I'm trying to grow some NAGA peppers, the new worlds hottest pepper, not sure how I'll use them yet but it will be fun.
OnTrack...that was a low blow dude...not nice...but...ok...I hope you enjoy your cheese... (don't you guys think that was very nice??) Actually...no...never mind...
I think OnTrack is the little engine that could.......I think I can irritate LQ, I think I can irritate LQ, I think I can, I think I can... ;D
Pensrock, I think you're absolutely on the money with your suggestion. I have about 72 jalapeno plants ready for the garden (I'll be giving about 1/2 of these away to friends and neighbors), but I think I'll still have plenty to use and freeze. I also like to use hot peppers in my 3 pepper venison sausage, so I'll have plenty for that as well.
I'd love to hear more about these NAGA peppers. Musta been named after someone's mother-in-law ;D
I would also suppose that you could prepare the ABTs in advance (with cream cheese, additional items) wrap in bacon and then vac-seal and put into the freezer then you could cut down a lot of prep time by just pulling out of the freezer and smoking or do you think the freezing of the cream cheese would not work?
Yep, Duck, it's that time of year again. I've got plenty of mild to hot chiles (peppers) started inside along with some other garden essentials. Last week fooled us with some high temperatures but we're not out of the woods in SW Pennsylvania yet. Supposed to have 30 degree temps at night this week. With the exception of the cold hardy plants, I won't get the garden fully planted until mid to late May.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v85/halbleib/plants.jpg)
Plenty of good info on canning out there for sure. Here's a simple method you can do on your stovetop with a deep, heavy pot, some canning jars with new seals and a rack or grate of some type to keep the jars up off the bottom of the pot. Make sure the pint or quart jars you choose will fit in the pot with enough room to be covered with water.
Depending on how many pint or quart jars you want to can, the basic canning liquid consists of 3 parts white vinegar and 1 part water. Add one crushed garlic clove per 2 cups of liquid. This recipe is for about 5 pint jars and 8-10 cups of sliced peppers. For some added color, try including a few baby carrots and pieces of cauliflower.
Approximately 10 cups sliced jalepenos (I like to slice mine about 1/4 inch. You can slice them any size or leave whole)
6 cups white vinegar
2 cups water
3 cloves of garlic, crushed
Prepare pot, rack/grate, jars and lids. Clean jars, lids and screw bands with hot, soapy water. Rinse and sterilize in simmering water.
In a large, stainless, steel saucepan, combine vinegar, water and garlic. Bring to boil. Reduce heat and boil gently for 5 more minutes. Discard garlic.
Pack peppers into hot jars to within a generous 1/2 inch of top of jar. Ladle/pour hot canning liquid into jar to cover peppers, leaving 1/2 inch headspace. Be sure all air bubbles are removed and maintain 1/2 inch headspace. Wipe rim of jar and center the lid. Screw band down until resistance is met then increase to finger-tip tight only. Do not over tighten.
Place jars in canning pot on the rack/grate so that the glass jars are not sitting directly on the pot bottom. Cover the jars completely with water and bring to a boil with the pot lid on. Boil for 10 minutes then turn off heat. Remove pot lid. Wait 5 minutes then remove jars, cool and store.
Now this is just a quick reference. I'd recommend picking up a good book, like the Ball Complete Book Of Home Preserving. The above recipe is from that book. Familiarize yourself with basic canning principles and safety. For example, don't try to modify this recipe or methods for canning low acidic foods that require pressure canning and longer processing times. Like the dreaded danger zones in smoked meats, there are a host of problems that can occur with improperly canned foods. Take it seriously and educate yourself.
-Brian
Duck,
I wouldn't use the pickled jalapenos for ABT's. What I have done in the past is to make a big batch, smoke them and when they are done freeze them on a cookie sheet. Then I place them in the food saver bags and store them until I need them. From the freezer to the table takes 20 to 25 minutes in the toaster oven.
I have pickled peppers before and between being too soft and the vinegar taste I don't think they would be good for ABT's.
John
Thanks for the tips guys.
MoSmoke, I think you're right on. Pickled jalapenos would give them a different taste and I do worry about the consistency of the vegetable after pickling.
Sweet Fancy Moses, Brian! That there is a whole lot of peppers. I actually have 90 jalapeno plants ready for the garden. I won't plant that many but will be planting plenty of them. I also have quite a few mild peppers getting ready. We're getting the same weather in Indiana that you are in sweet old SW PA. It's gonna be cold for the rest of this week in the morning, so I'm figuring probably next week at the earliest to getting them in. The next time I'm visiting the folks in Bethel Park, I may have to swing by and see your set up. I come right through your town on the way in to my folks' place.
Marc
Bethel Park, eh? Yep, I'm not far from there at all. Small world. Heck yeah, stop by.
Those are not ALL peppers. There's some tomaters mixed in there along with some herbs. I also have a few zucchini and broccoli plants started for some earlier yields. I'm not getting my hopes up for garden weather until about mid-May. All it takes is one late frost to ruin a lot of work.
-Brian
Oh yeah, here's a great resource for canning: http://www.freshpreserving.com (http://www.freshpreserving.com)
-Brian
Smoking Duck,
Go to YOUTUBE and search for naga peppers to see some people trying to deal with the pain from eating a naga pepper. A regular hab is about 250,000 scoville units in heat, a red hab about 400,000 and the naga is around 1,200,000 scoville units. Serious heat for sure. The naga is also known as Bhut Jolokia.
Hers a link to one of many people trying the naga....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6U-6oToahL0&feature=related
pensrock
First of all, the guy in the video is an Eagles Fan. You can tell he ain't quite all there to begin with ;)
Secondly, if it's that hot when the journey begins, I would not want to feel what it would be like at the end of that journey.
I like spicy, but when it gets to the point of pain, you lose me there.
I'm too old to put my body through that! :o
I believe my father ate one once without knowing what it was. It turned him 3 different shades of purple and then because my brother and I were laughing so hard, he turned our butts 3 shades of red!
LOL Duck, Your father may of eaten a habenaro but I doubt if it was a naga.
These peppers are fairly new, I think they have been around only for a few years . I'm not quite sure what I'll do with mine yet. I know I will NOT be eating a whole one raw. I know a pepperhead who ate 1/2 one last year and he said it hurt for over half an hour. I'll most likely try a small slice of one myself, without any cameras around! ;D
I think I'll smoke and dry some to use in other dishes. The guy who gave me the seeds sprinkled some on pretzels with dry ranch dressing and it was hot but tasted good, I may try a few things like that. I may pickle a couple 1/2 pints just for the smart a$$ who says he cannot find anything hot enough. I'm only growing six plants and a friend wants a couple so I'll only have about four plants and they are 120 day fruits so I hope I do get some ripe ones but in PA 120 days of growing is asking a lot.
I'm also growing jalapenos, cayennes (my personal favorite), a few Thai hot and Hot wax. I have a bunch of others already dried so this will be plenty for me to play around with. I may try to make some hot sauce this year.
Yea, I wondered if you would notice the Eagles shirt. Not one of my favorite teams either.
Thanks Stick...very informative!! Might have to try it myself!!
Maybe it wasn't that pepper. I thought it was because of the Indian name. When we were kids growing up, Mom and Dad use to help foreign students who were attending the University of Pittsburgh get acclimated to the US. This one semester, there was a couple from India who were attending Pitt. After having them over for Sunday dinner a couple of times, they wanted us to come over their apartment for an Indian dinner. They had a salad and there was a pepper that was similar in size and color to the NAGA. Anyways, Dad bit into it and it was like watching a cartoon! What was funny was that they had him drink some milk but also they gave him a teaspoon of sugar and he soon returned to his normal flesh color. To this day, I don't know what type of pepper it was but I know it had to be hot and it was from India. Man, I start chuckling every time I think about the color of his skin and how he was sweating like a tax cheat. :D
This pepper did come from India so maybe it was a parent of this pepper? It must have really been hot though. ;) ;D
I'm with you Marc. I love heat and flavor but not pain. I've only known a few people in my day that actually enjoy extremely hot/borderline painful stuff. My uncle George is the first to come to mind.
This is the first time I will be growing habaneros. I've tried some dry seasoning, similar to what Pens described, with habanero and a bunch of other dried chile powders mixed together. It was pretty good. I also like jerk seasoning and traditionally scotch bonnet is used. I figured the habanero would be pretty close for that as well.
And yes, the PENS do ROCK! 7-0 so far in the playoffs!
-Brian
They sure do Brian! They have been awesome games indeed. Game 4 ought to be very interesting. Fleury has looked pretty outstanding and their defense (which has been the weakest part of their game, IMO) has played better than I thought they would.
Hey Pensrock, do you have a recipe for making hotsauce? I've got a multitude of different hot peppers I'm going to be growing and I think I'd like to give making my own hot sauce a try!
Thanks!
Marc
QuoteAnd yes, the PENS do ROCK! 7-0 so far in the playoffs!
Stickbowcrafter
That is where I picked up my 'pensrock' name, it actually came from a bumper sticker WDVE was handing out years ago. It had the pens logo and since it is a rock station it said...... PensRock.
SmokingDuck
The guy I know who makes hot sauces starts by fermenting the pepper mash which gives the peppers an aged taste. If you read bottled hot sauces they all use 'aged peppers' and fermenting is how they do it. I'm in the process of learning myself, you can ferment any veggie, its actually is a natural way to pickle things but it has a distintive flavor from the process. If you ever tried to make you own pepperchini (sp?) using a canning pickling method you will notice they do not taste anything like the store bought peppers but if you take the same peppers and ferment/pickle them they taste much better. This guy brought in some fermented cauliflower with garlic and habenaro peppers, boy were those tasty. So a long story short, no I have not made any good hot sauces yet. But I'm working on it. I mainly use my peppers fresh, canned or smoked and dried then made into powders. If you search in Google for fermenting peppers I'm sure you will find lots of information, that's what I have been doing.
Hey SmokingDuck...I'm going back quite a few posts on this thread about freezing ABTs...how does the cream cheese handle the freezing and warming process? Seems that the cream cheese might leech out a lot of water when you warm them up? Just a ?...
Hey LQ,
You know, I'm not sure. I think you may be right about that, though. I suppose it wouldn't be necessary to fill ahead of time if you were going to smoke the frozen jalo's. It would be nice to be able to smoke and freeze ahead of time, tho and just pop into an oven for a couple of minutes and there you go.
Now, you got me thinking. Me and thinking go together like oil and water, unfortunately ;)
Maybe someone on here would know the answer to that question
Need to send out a hail to IronHabs?
If anyone should know, it would be him.
:)best recipe for canning jalapenos at www.lesleycooks.com, I have also frozen jalapenos just like sweet green peppers using my food saver. they keep well and can be used in canned salsa recipes later. the same thing can be done with tomatoes, freeze whole, use later. This method works for me, and while these veggies are frozen, i am able to can the veggies that ripen first, cukes, zucchinis, etc. This is when i get my relishes done.
maxie...freeze tomatos? Please tell us more? Lots of water going on in a tom. Doesn't it make the flesh...well...kinda mushy?
I freeze tomatos but you are right they are mushy. I don't use them as tomato slices but as pulp for sauces. We typically have so many tomatos that during the season this is an easy way to store them. We throw them in a bag and freeze them.....no special prep. You feel a whole lot more eager to mess with them when there is snow on the ground rather than in the middle of the havest season.