Thai Basil Pepper Jelly

So canning season has pretty much rapidly drawn to an end for me. Sad, I know. But I wanted to make one last thing before all the homegrown peppers and such are gone from both the curb market and my fledgling pepper plants.

In my travels along the information superhighway, I found this great recipe for Thai Basil Pepper Jelly. I really wanted to try it since I've got this huge thai basil plant that I don't use all that often.

This is a simple recipe, it just takes a little planning ahead. The majority of the planning ahead comes in the form of making your own Thai basil vinegar.

Gather up the following: 2 cups of fresh Thai basil, cleaned and roughly chopped, a quart of white vinegar and a jar to store it all in. Once you've got the basil and the vinegar in a jar together, give it a good shake and store in a cool, shady place. I made sure to shake it up again every few days over the next TWO WEEKS. Yes, you read that right... it needs to sit for two weeks to properly infuse.

 And thru the magic of the interwebz, here is what it will look like after two weeks.

Strain the vinegar/basil mixture and toss the leaves.  You'll end up with this:

Roughly chop and measure out two cups of green peppers, one cup hot peppers (use any kind you like) and one cup red onion.  Add them to the food processor.  

Pulse until not quite pureed.  You still want a little texture, but not much.  It should look like this:

Transfer to a large pot, add dried basil, thai basil infused vinegar and sugar.  Mix well.

Bring mixture to a full boil and then add 3 pouches of liquid pectin. (If you want the jelly to have a less natural color to it, this is the time to add your green food coloring or food gel.)  Return to a hard boil and stir constantly for 1 full minute.  

After a minute is up, turn the heat to low while you fill your prepared canning jars.

Place jars back into hot water canner (like the one below) and process for 10 minutes.

On a side note, I found this monster canner at an estate sale for $4.00!  It's a little rusty and nothing super fancy, but it does the job very well!  Before you run out an buy a canner, check out estate, garage and yard sales or even a flea market.  They can also be a great place to find jars too!  

Once processed, remove the jars from hot water and place on a dish towel at least 6 inches apart from one another and allow them to cool.  If you've sealed them properly, you will hear several loud metallic pops coming from the kitchen over the next hour or so as the jars cool and the seals suck themselves in.

I had a little leftover that didn't fit into a jar and let me tell you... it is amazing!  It's got the familiar look of pepper jelly but when you taste it, it's got this depth from the thai basil and then this creeping heat.  Oh man, this is a definite keeper!

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Thai Basil Pepper Jelly

Thai Basil Vinegar

2 cups freshThai basil, cleaned, roughly chopped

1 qt. white vinegar

glass jar for storage

Jelly

2 cups green pepper, roughly chopped

1 cup fresh hot pepper, roughly chopped

1 cup red onion, roughly chopped

1/2 tsp dried basil

1 1/2 cups thai basil vinegar

6 cups sugar

3 (3 oz.) packets liquid pectin

Instructions for Thai basil vinegar

Put fresh Thai Basil and white vinegar in a jar. Place lid on jar, give it a good shake and let vinegar mixture sit at room temperature (in a cool, shaded spot) for 2 weeks. Shake the infusion up a little every couple of days.  After two weeks, strain vinegar and discard basil.

Instructions for Jelly

Put vegetables in food processor and pulse until minced well.  

Pour into a large pot and add dried basil, 1 1/2 cup of thai basil vinegar and sugar in a large saucepan. 

Bring to a rolling boil and then add the pectin. 

Return to a rolling boil and stir constantly for 1 full minute. 

Turn heat to low and ladle hot jelly into prepared canning jars and process in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes.

Canning is Awesome. That’s All There is to It.

I need to preface this with the fact that I'm being lazy and using the post I created for this month's MidtownMontomeryLiving.com, which I'm now a contributing author for their gardening and DIY section.

Now that i've remembered how to log into my blogger account (which yes, I know needs to be self-hosted and use wordpress.org), hopefully I'll be posting more.  I have several recipes that I've taken photos of that I need to blog about.

With that being said, here's "Canning is Awesome. That’s All There is to It."

Last summer, I tried my hand at canning for the first time and I was really quite pleased with the results.  I had 6 jars of homemade watermelon rind pickle, which I gave to my dad for Father’s Day.

So with a successful canning attempt under my belt, I thought I would expand my repertoire this year.  I made peach preserves using fresh Chilton County peaches and a recipe from a 1928 cookbook (10 lbs. of peaches, 10 lbs. of sugar) and the other weekend, I canned peppers.

I had been collecting jalapenos, Serranos, chilies and cowhorns from my garden for a few weeks and they were starting to pile up.  I didn’t want them to go to waste and I love pickled jalapeno slices on lots of stuff, so I decided to make my own!

The container on the left has my home-growns in it.  A few were contributed by my neighbor, as well.

Now, while I had a fair amount of various peppers (my neighbor even contributed a few), I didn’t think I had enough to warrant all the “work” of canning.  So I headed to the Montgomery Curb Market on Madison Ave.

If you’ve never been down to the Curb Market…well, shame on you!  It’s so awesome.  They have all sorts of fabulous veggies, fruits, herbs, and berries (among other things).  Some vendors are strictly organic and others aren’t, but unlike out at the State Farmer’s Market – the vast majority of the produce is local and sold by local folks.  It’s open Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday 5:00am – 12 Noon.  And while the vendors all seem to provide bags, I always like to bust out one of my “green bags” I use at the grocery store and make myself as much of a dirty hippie as possible.  Yay environment!  Moving on…I left the Curb Market with some wonderfully huge organic jalapenos and normal banana peppers (I like those on my sandwiches!).

Upon returning home, I did a little” canning peppers” research on Google, found a recipe I could live with and started the process.

First:  We need to have a little talk.  So all the recipes are saying things like “Make sure to wear gloves when handling peppers” and blah blah blah.  I’m thinking to myself “Amateurs.  Gloves?  I don’t need no stinking gloves…”



Normally, this is true.  But when you are cleaning, handling, slicing, scooping, and stuffing about 7 lbs of peppers, YOU SHOULD WEAR GLOVES.  I know what you’re thinking “I hate wearing gloves when I cook.  I have no dexterity.”   This is one instance where compromised dexterity is not an excuse.  If you don’t want to sit on your couch for the rest of the night with your hands SCREAMING at you and you can’t do anything but wash them with Murphy’s Oil Soap (which works by the way) and pray you don’t forget and rub your eye (or if you’re a man use the facilities with no “buffer”…think about it) – use the gloves.

Now to the pickling:  It’s really very easy compared to other canning I have done.  Wash and slice all your peppers into rings.  Why rings?  Well, if you do them in rings and not as whole peppers, you don’t have to skin them and to be honest, that just looked like more work than I was up for.  Plus rings are easier to use, I think.

While you’re slicing, depending on what recipe you are using, bring the vinegar-salt brine to a boil.  This is our pickling agent.  NOTE: Don’t stand over it.  Few things are more painful than getting a big lung full of evaporating vinegar.


Here's a pretty standard recipe (7-8 pints):
1 clove of garlic per jar
6 cups of vinegar
2 cups of water
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon pickling/canning salt

Start packing the rings and garlic into the hot, sterilized jars.  You will want to smoosh the peppers in good, but make sure a lid goes on flat.  I found a hand juicer works well to push them down.  A pestle would be perfect!

Once packed, fill each jar with the slightly boiling vinegar brine, leaving ¼ inch of headspace. Then use a chopstick or small spatula to remove any air pockets from the jar.

Place the hot lid on top and screw on the band.  Process in a boiling water canner for 10-15 minutes.

Once they are done, remove the jars and allow them to cool for about 24 hours before storing.  DO NOT TIGHTEN THE BANDS!  Re-tighten the bands can screw up your seal. They will need to sit for a minimum of 3 weeks before sampling.

The best part is standing back and admiring all of your pretty jars of homegrown and/or locally grown peppers!  Plus you can have a taste of summer during those bleak winter months.

Hot Pepper Jelly

A little back story first:
I'm trying out some different recipes for Christmas gifts.  I'm kind of shooting myself in the foot if I go into too much detail b/c i don't want everyone to know what they are getting from me for Christmas, so let's just say I'm seeing what's good and how much of the good stuff certain recipes make.  Yes, I'm already thinking about Christmas presents, but when you don't plan on buying stuff for people and instead are making their presents, you kind of have to plan ahead.

So with that said, today I made Hot Pepper Jelly.  What on earth do I do with Hot Pepper Jelly, you may ask yourself?  Well personally I dump the jar onto a big ole' hunk of cream cheese and dig in with some crackers.  It's an EXCELLENT appetizer and super easy to do...especially if someone else gives you the jelly. lol

The recipe I'm using comes from the St. Michael's and All Angels Cookbook. This was the parish I grew up in located just outside Stone Mountain Village and right down the street from my elementary school.  The recipe comes from a lady named, Cynthia Sutton and while I don't know who she is, Mom said she had wonderful recipes and that she was sure this one was equally as good.  If memory serves, she said something along the lines of "Ooh its a Cynthia Sutton recipe!" :)

Ok enough rambling, onto the good stuff.

First off: your canning jars.  You will need 5 8oz. jars.  Wash them and then put into a hot water bath.  I usually fill the jars with some water so that they won't float.

Bring the water to a boil while making the actual jelly.  They will be nice and hot by the time the jelly is ready to be put into them.

Take 1 large bell pepper (any color will do, but I used green b/c i'm poor and they are cheap.), cut the top off, remove the seeds and quarter.  You want the actual quantity of bell pepper to equal 1 1/2 cups.  Toss into the food processor or blender.

Next, take your jalapenos (fresh from my garden or your's or your grocery store), chop off the tops, slice in half length-wise, remove the seeds and measure out a 1/2 cup (add more or less for varying degrees of heat) and add to the bell pepper in the food processor.

Grind up the peppers until they look like this:

Transfer the pepper mixture (juices and all) into a large pot and then add 6 1/2 cups of sugar, a pinch of salt and 1 1/2 cups of white distilled vinegar.

Stir the mixture well, bring to a brisk boil and then boil for 3 minutes.  DO NOT WALK AWAY FROM THE STOVE WHILE THIS IS GOING ON!  I made the mistake of leaving to do a tiny bit of vacuuming, only to return to it boiling over and it smelling oddly-enough like burnt marshmallows.  (Burnt sugar is burnt sugar, yes?)  This is also why they are no pictures of the mixture boiling...priorities.

After the mixture boils for 3 minutes (hopefully, without incident...)  Now this is where I got confused a little and I'm hoping it doesn't effect my end product.  The recipe calls for "1 bottle of Certo", which I found when I Wally World, but it was SUPER pricey ($6.00+ for a 2 pack) compared to a big packet of instant fruit pectin (97 cents).  So I read both packages and came to the conclusion that one bottle and one packet made the same amount of end product and I went with the packet. (I had a tiny bit leftover after filling the jars and I put it into a clean jar without a lid, just so I could taste it after it firmed up.  It seems to firming just fine - so I'm guessing everything went correctly with the  fruit pectin .)

***UPDATE***
Monday, Aug 22
I'm now under the impression that the one packet of fruit pectin wasn't enough.  After sitting out for several hours to cool and firm, the jelly was still rather fluid, so i'm not going to cheap out next time, and i'll be buying the actual Certo.  Oh well, live and learn right?!
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So add the bottle of Certo and continue to boil for one more minute.

Remove the pot from heat and let sit for 5 minutes.

Your jelly jars should be nice and hot now.  Use tongs to remove one from the water and then use a baster or ladle to put the liquid jelly into the jar.  Next screw on the lid and set aside.  Continue this until all the jars are filled and lidded.

If you want the jelly to be more of that neon green color, I would add some green food coloring or food gel to the jelly after removing it from the heat, but i'm fine with the natural color.

The jelly is still cooling in its jars so I haven't tried it yet, which I guess isn't a very good thing to do.  I probably should have waited to try it before I went and posted about it - but nothing ventured nothing gained. I have FAITH that it will be tasty and if it isn't... well I'll have some ideas that might make it that way.

Fingers Crossed!!

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Hot Pepper Jelly

by: Cynthia Sutton

yields: 5 8oz. jars.

5 8oz. Bell jars

1 1/2 cups bell pepper (any color)

1/2 cup of jalapenos (fresh)

6 1/2 cups of sugar

1 1/2 cups of white distilled vinegar

1 bottle of Certo or one packet of instant fruit pectin (should say on the package that it's good for 5 8oz. servings)

pinch of salt

Grind peppers in blender or food processor. Mix peppers, sugar, salt and vinegar into a large pot.  Bring to a brisk boil.  Boil for 3 minutes.  Add Certo/Fruit Pectin and boil for an additional minute.

Remove from heat and let stand for 5 minutes.  Pour into hot, sterilized jars and seal.