Hot Pepper Jelly

We had a pretty successful haul of pepper plants from our garden last year and I made this pepper jelly but never shared the recipe. This year, I planted loads of pepper plants but because it's been so chilly at night, they haven't been thriving as well as in previous years. We'll see how they do and whether I can make any batches of pepper jelly with the Shishito, poblano, jalapeno, Anaheim, Korean long hots, cayenne, cherry, and habanero seedlings that are currently struggling to produce.

This batch of pepper jelly I'm sharing was made with one of the end of season hauls where I had just a mix of various peppers and no large quantity of one in particular and it ended up being really yummy. I think that a singular pepper varietal would be great, but I liked the balance of the mix.

Ingredients [yields 4 to 5 pints]:

3 cups finely diced peppers
1 cup apple cider vinegar
1.35 oz. package powder pectin
5 cups sugar

Start by chopping up the peppers finely. Leave in as many seeds as you like for more heat, but I personally am not a fan of picking the seeds out of my teeth so I remove most of them. Frankly, the ribs are really where the heat lives anyway.

Add the peppers, vinegar, and pectin to a pot and bring to a boil.

Stir in the sugar and return to a boil. Once the mixture is at a rapid boil again, let it boil for one minute before removing from the heat.

Store in sterilized canning jars to make them shelf stable, otherwise, keep in the fridge. There's quite a bit of sugar in this so it's unlikely to spoil, but regardless, be safe!

This pepper jelly goes great as a sweetening and heat-ening ingredient in salad dressings, as a lovely spread for a cheese board, scooped on top of a block of cream cheese and used as a dip for Wheat Thins, it's nice on sandwiches; it's pretty versatile.

Here's the recipe page: