My garden’s overflowing with jalapenos and serranos this year and I’ve stuffed them every way I can and was running out of Ideas on what to do with them all. My sister-in-law said candy them. It took me a minute to wrap my mind around it but a little google-fu and I found plenty of candy jalapeno recipes. I found one that looked good and tweaked it with some additional spices and tore into it.
Verdict: Where have these BEEN all my life?
Gather up about 3-4 pounds of jalapenos. You city folk can just go buy some at the store.
Chop them into little slices with the seeds, up to 1/4 inch thick. Discard the stems and points of course. Yes Virginia those are red jalapenos and some serranos in there.
Here’s the rest of what you will need:
- 2 cups apple cider vinegar.
- 1/2 cup water
- 6 cups granulated sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon celery seed
- 1/2 teaspoon turmeric
- 3 teaspoons granulated garlic
- 1 teaspoon cayenne or chili powder
- 2-3 little pea-sized chunks of candied/crystalized ginger
- Bunch of 4 and 8 ounce canning jars/lids/rings
Once you have all your peppers sliced, get everything else ready.
Now add all the spices, sugar and vinegar into a 5 quart pot. Bring to a boil. Once boiling, add all those slices right into the boiling liquid. Make sure to coat everything with the liquid and bring it back to a boil.
Once boiling again, give them 3-4 minutes to roll over in that bubbling goodness and get your jars ready. Stir to make sure they don’t clump up.
That fluid mixture is going to soak into those peppers and when it cools off they are going to be hot, sweet and chewy.
Line up your clean jars and use a slotted spoon to fish those peppers out and put them into the jars. Push them down a little bit and make sure they don’t quite reach the top of the jar.
Now ladle in the boiling fluid that remains in the pot, into the jars so that you have about 1/4″ left to the top of the jar. You might want to use the ladle handle to push the peppers a bit and get any bubbles out.
Use a napkin and clean all the goo off of the top edge of the gars and get a lid on those jars.
Also: SAVE THE FLUID!!!! You show up at a BBQ and slather some of that sweet spicy goodness on some chicken or pork and you are going to be Lord God King of that BBQ.
Now go ahead and boil those jars in a canning pot for 10 minutes if using 4 oz jars, 15 minutes for 8 oz ones. Some say let them sit and stew in those jars a week or two before trying them but I have been popping these peppers like candy all evening, they are divine.
Put these candied peppers on some BBQ burgers, cream cheese crackers, stuffed potatoes or whatever, and you’re going to rule the day.
