Pickled Chillies

Technically, I haven't made anything because I used ready-made pickling vinegar, but I'm still posting up my pickled chillies (apache & cheyenne)

Traffic Light Chilli Jam

Following the success of my chilli jam last year I decided to experiment a bit this year and try making traffic light chilli jam.

I more or less followed the same recipe as last time which for one batch is:

• 300g peppers (I tended to use this quantity in sweet peppers, then added 4-5 chillies depending on how hot they were).
• 600ml vinegar (I used either white wine or cider)
• 1kg jam sugar

For the red I used bellboy, sweet banana, apache and cayenne.

For the amber I used luteus (supplemented with shop bought orange peppers) and cheyenne.

For the green I used unripe versions of whatever looked greenest.

Here are the results

Taste wise, the green is definitely the mildest; I assume because the chillies haven't ripened yet so have less heat... still has a kick though.

Chilli Jam

I am a huge fan of sweet chilli sauce so thought I would have a go at making some chilli jam; this version is from a Nigella recipe. The recipe called for:


150g red chillies (I used 100g)
150g red peppers (I used 200g)
1kg jam sugar
600ml cider vinegar (I used white wine vinegar)


I changed the quantities of the peppers because when I was weighing out the chillies there seemed to be rather a lot of them (I used apache).

This is what I did:


Pulsed the chillies in a food processor until they were finely chopped. Added the red pepper and repeated the pulsing.


Placed the vinegar in a pan and dissolved the sugar over a low heat. This is supposed to be without stirring it, but I stirred it once or twice.


Add the pepper mixture to the pan, bring to the boil and let it boil rapidly for 10 minutes.


Take the pan of the heat and leave to cool. It will become more syrupy, then change from syrup to viscous and from viscous to jelly-like as it cools.


After about 40 minutes, decant into warmed, sterilised jars and seal tightly.


This can be eaten straight away and is delicious, even if a little (or very) hot. I guess the variety of chilli used will make a difference to the heat level.

This has gone down an absolute storm... even with it's blow your head off properties. I am eating it with pretty much every meal and all jars are now spoken for. I will definitely be making this again.

Pickled Peppers

I pickled some chilli peppers today, which simply involved removing from the plant, making sure they were clean and blemish free, putting them in a sterilised jar and covering them with pickling vinegar... easy peasy!

In the past I have just left them to dry out, but I thought I would try preserving them differently this year.

Marrow & Ginger Jam (with a hint of chilli)

I wasn't expecting to be posting on here so early in the year, but it just goes to show, you never know what you might find yourself doing on a Wednesday morning?!

My freezer has been stocked with a jumbo marrow that I grew last year and had absolutely no idea what to do with. I don't even like marrow... it was more of an experiment to see how big it would get.

This was it in all it's glory:

So, a quick search on the internet discovered a couple of recipes for marrow jam with varying quantities of ginger & chilli, so I decided to have a go. This is what I used:

3lbs (approx.) frozen marrow
4 apples (empire)
juice of 2 lemons
large piece of root ginger
4lbs jam sugar (with added pectin)
2 large red chillies

and this is what I did:

Peeled, cored and cubed the apples, placed in the pan with the already cubed frozen marrow.

Cooked without adding any extra liquid until tender, crushed everything together and added the lemon juice.

Peeled the ginger, chopped it in half and threw it in the pan along with the whole chillies.

Brought the mixture back up to simmering point, removed from the heat and stirred in the sugar until it dissolved.

Returned to the heat and brought it back up to boiling point, gave it a stir and let it simmer...

simmer some more...

and simmer some more...

... until it finally thickened up (about 2ish hours) and it actually looks and tastes like jam. Then removed the ginger and chillies.

I shouldn't really be surprised because I did pretty much follow a recipe or two, but I suppose because I used frozen marrow and have never made jam before I was expecting it to go wrong.

I decanted it into warm sterilised jars while it was still hot, and sealed them. I think it looks quite impressive if I do say so myself.

The kitchen needs a good clean though... mental note, must get a funnel; attempting to spoon hot jam into hot jars is a dangerous and messy business!