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.

Green Tomato Jam

I thought I'd do something completely different with some of the tomatoes and green tomato jam seemed completely different; I made a couple of batches of this.

This is what the recipe called for:

3 lbs Green Tomatoes
2 lbs Cooking Apples
4 tbsp Lemon Juice (bottled)
1 oz Root Ginger
3 lbs Sugar (I used a mixture of jam sugar and granulated)
A Little Water

This is what I did:

Wash and quarter the tomatoes (the second time I chopped them smaller than quarters). Peel, core and cut the apples into chunks. Place in a pan with the lemon juice.

Slice the ginger and tie up in muslin; place this in the pan.

Cover with enough water to come to the level of the fruit. I didn't really know what or how much this meant; the first time I think I put far too much water in and it took ages to simmer away, so the next time I just put in enough to cover the bottom of the pan before I added the tomatoes and apples.

Bring to the boil, then reduce to a simmer until the fruit is tender.

Remove from the heat, add the sugar and stir to dissolve.

Return to the heat, bring back to the boil then allow to simmer until reaching the correct consistency. Stir occasionally.

Decant into warm sterilised jars and seal.

This really is a lovely jam, a couple of people have said it tastes a bit like plum. You wouldn't think it was made from tomatoes and it is delicious on hot buttered granary toast.

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.

Gooseberry Jam

I stripped the gooseberry bush of fruit this morning with the intention of making jam. I filled a colander which surprised me as there didn't seem to be that many on the bush.

I found a recipe, and had to adjust the quantities to match the weight after I had topped and tailed them, so this is what I used:

2 1/2 lbs gooseberries
1 1/4 pints of water
1 1/4 lbs granulated sugar
1 1/4 lbs jam sugar (with added pectin)

I did half and half of the sugar because by all accounts gooseberries have enough natural pectin in them so you don't need to add any... I still thought it best to supplement it though.

This is what I did:

Placed the gooseberries in a pan with the water

Simmered until soft, which took about 20 minutes

Although, I thought there was far too much water in the pan, so decanted out about 3/4 pint. I took it off the heat, added the sugar and stirred to dissolve it

Then placed it back on the heat to boil rapidly

Apparently it should only take about 5 minutes to set, but mine took about 30 minutes to get a jam consistency. I stirred it periodically and also removed the scum that settles on the top. It also changed colour from green to red.

I potted up into it into warm sterilised jars while it was still hot, using my recently purchased jam funnel

and sealed them.

This was how it looked on a scone, when still warm... yummy!

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!