Canning Jalapenos

[Smoking Duck]

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

[Stickbowcrafter]

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

[Stickbowcrafter]

Oh yeah, here's a great resource for canning: http://www.freshpreserving.com

-Brian

[pensrock]

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

[Smoking Duck]

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!

[pensrock]

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.

[La Quinta]

Thanks Stick...very informative!! Might have to try it myself!!

[Smoking Duck]

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

[pensrock]

This pepper did come from India so maybe it was a parent of this pepper? It must have really been hot though.  ;) ;D

[Stickbowcrafter]

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

[Smoking Duck]

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

[pensrock]

And 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.

[La Quinta]

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 ?...

[Smoking Duck]

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

[La Quinta]

Need to send out a hail to IronHabs?