Saturday, October 22, 2011

Post Produce: Peppers!


I'm going to spare you all the highly, excessively alliterative content I considered including in this post. Suffice it to say I'm dealing with a plethora of peppers as I participate in my first Post Produce. A couple days ago I finally called the pepper harvest over and harvested every last one of them. We may have some sunny days but it's going to stay cold and the chances of many more of them growing appreciably or even ripening are pretty slim. I selected a good quantity for freezing and then, faced with this abundance I decided it was time to try pickling some.


The first recipe I used was the basic one for hot peppers in the Ball Blue Book Guide to Preserving. It's a simple solution of vinegar and water flavored with garlic. I mixed it up by using different peppers, treatments and additional vegetables. Some recipes I had looked at called for blistering and peeling the peppers first so I did that with the largest of the remaining Chervena Chushkas. These are so good this way I may have to pressure can some next year so I have them for making muhummara. For now the commercial bottled ones will have to do.


In the end I had eight pints. Three are straight, whole jalapenos, two are the roasted sweet peppers with some carrots added to one jar, two are green Italian frying peppers with celery in one and onion in the other and the last jar is plain Ancho Gigantea--none of which were actually gigantic.


With these done and out of the way I'm still left with quite a few more green Chervena Chushka peppers. For these I'll use Ball's "Pickled Pepper Mix" recipe. This version calls for slitting and brining the peppers for twelve to eighteen hours so I'm timing that process so that I can do the actual pickling tomorrow morning.


Now my only question is how we're going to eat all these pickled peppers?!

3 Responses:

cityslipper (small kitchen garden) said...

I love the aroma of peppers roasting on the stove... but I've yet to can any that I've roasted. Actually, I share the challenge you mention: how to eat all the peppers I've pickled? I'm the only one in my household who eats them, and not nearly enough to get through even a quart of pickled peppers in a year.

Here's my favorite way to preserve peppers: I put them through a meat grinder along with onions, celery, and carrots. Then I make roux (vegetable oil and flour) seasoned with black pepper, white pepper, and cayenne pepper... and while the roux is still cooking in a large skillet, I add the ground-up veggies. When the veggies are cooked, I end up with a rich, gloppy soup-base that I freeze in 1/2 cup containers.

Thanks so much for participating in Post Produce! I hope you'll join in again in coming months.

Mil said...

Hmmm...I'm thinking some kind of salsa, either chopped or smooth, since there has to be a sour aspect to it, with some kind of rich, porky dish. Mexican? Tacos?

Shady Character said...

I like the idea of that soup base. Making a note to try it next season. I put some of the peppers on a ham sandwich yesterday and they were pretty good once I took off the stems and scooped out the seeds.