What can I do with hot peppers . . .

. . . that won't cause smoke to come out of my ears??



I'm thinking cream cheese and that sort of thing. Are there other ways to enjoy good hot peppers without paying the price in pain?!?

Steve

inspired by that "Peach Scorpion Pepper Jam" Steph made . . . stuff like that very hot?


Super Chili

One thing I save some of my hot peppers for is Pear Relish. When the pears get ready with grind them up with a few onions and quite a few hot pepper pods. You want it a tad hot, that way when you add the sugar it is absolute delishious. We serve it over pintos or field peas. Yummy.

Another thing is I always string up a few and dry them, I like to make an english pea soup that I use a whole dried chili in. It adds the heat flavor but I can take out the pod and no one gets that random seed that set you on fire.

And lastly, I love tomato relish also, mix with one ground chili, sugar and vinegar and can it up. I also like this on beans with corn bread to soak up the tomato/bean juice left in my plate, yummy.

Candy them! I followed the recipe here and made some.

There arent words that exist to describe how addictive these little savoury, sweet, spicy, crunchy, garlicky pickled jalapeno rounds are. Put them on sandwiches, tacos, rice or bake them into cornbread. Youll need more and more!

Ingredients

3 pounds fresh, firm, jalapeno peppers, washed
2 cups cider vinegar
6 cups white granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
1/2 teaspoon celery seed
3 teaspoons granulated garlic
1 teaspoon ground cayenne pepper

Instructions

Wearing gloves, remove the stems from all of the jalapeno peppers. The easiest way to do this is to slice a small disc off of the stem-end along with the stem. Discard the stems.
Slice the peppers into uniform 1/8-1/4 inch rounds. Set aside.
In a large pot, bring cider vinegar, white sugar, turmeric, celery seed, granulated garlic and cayenne pepper to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 5 minutes. Add the pepper slices and simmer for exactly 4 minutes. Use a slotted spoon to transfer the peppers, loading into clean, sterile canning jars to within 1/4 inch of the upper rim of the jar. Turn heat up under the pot with the syrup and bring to a full rolling boil. Boil hard for 6 minutes.
Use a ladle to pour the boiling syrup into the jars over the jalapeno slices. Insert a cooking chopstick to the bottom of the jar two or three times to release any trapped pockets of air. Adjust the level of the syrup if necessary. Wipe the rims of the jars with a clean, damp paper towel and fix on new, two-piece lids to finger-tip tightness.

*If you have leftover syrup, and it is likely that you will, you may can it in half-pint or pint jars, too. Its wonderful brushed on meat on the grill or added to potato salad or, or, or In short, dont toss it out!

Place jars in a canner, cover with water by 2-inches. Bring the water to a full rolling boil. When it reaches a full rolling boil, set the timer for 10 minutes for half-pints or 15 minutes for pints. When timer goes off, use canning tongs to transfer the jars to a cooling rack. Leave them to cool, undisturbed, for 24 hours. When fully cooled, wipe them with a clean, damp washcloth then label.

Allow to mellow for at least two weeks, but preferably a month before eating. Or dont. I wont tell!

They are sweet, and have some heat, but when you slice them its easy to seed so you have more control over the temperature. We did both rings and a rough chop on them to get a relish consistency. We mix them up with some cream cheese, makes a great dip. It doesn't last long. Can also add some chopped smoked bacon to the cream cheese give the dip even more flavor. It takes a LOT of peppers to get 3lbs of peppers so its a good way to use up a bunch of peppers.

Whoa! Pear sauce with peppers & onions over pintos! Pea soup with peppers . . . ? Our English friends know about that?

The flavor of jalapeno is a real favorite! DW still allows me to have chips - may need to start buying them at the health food store.

The bacon, yeah!

Steve

My wife is a nurse on the cardiac unit (so no bacon, but she did mention smoked salmon which I'd be all about so we'll see) and made up a double batch of the candied jalapenos with fat free cream cheese, and a couple boxes of fat free crackers. By the way a "batch" is 1 block of cream cheese and one small jar (the next size smaller than a 1/2 pint) of candied jalapenos. So she had 2 blocks of cream cheese dip that she made and it was gone in less than 8hrs. People went bonkers for it. So maybe you can find a happy medium with DW over this.

my dh makes habanero hot pepper jelly but he will smear some cream cheese on a cracker and then put a small amount of the jelly on top of that! he LOVES hot stuff like that! a BYC friend and her dh use the jelly in making pasta sauce to spice it up! it is wonderful and not as hot as you would expect! they did up meatballs in pasta sauce for one of her swaps and everyone got to try them and loved the taste.

Oooh, those peppers look fabulous! I grew the scorpion peppers because they were supposed to rival the Ghost Chilis in heat (which I am also growing- but so far have only produced 2 small peppers.) A lot of times it is hard making your own recipes for jams and jellies because if you add too much non-acid ingredients it can become unsafe... so you have to add extra vinegar, etc. to keep things in the safe, but that can sacrifice the taste. Anyways, my thinking was that I could grow a SUPER HOT chili and use so little of it that it would have almost no affect on the ph. It worked... I was able to use only one chili for my entire batch of jam and it is hotter than if I used my usual 1/4 cup habaneros. So that was what I was up to.


Habanero Pineapple Chili Jam is what got me hooked on the chili jam thing... here is my recipe, just exchange the habaneros out for whatever hot peppers you want (I promise it won't affect the taste.) I would suggest using all red or orange peppers because it makes the jam really pretty. It can be eaten like a normal jam, or used as a marinade for pork. As I'm writing this, it also occurs to me that it could make an AWESOME pineapple upside down chili cake!

4 cups Pineapple Chunks (I use canned)
1 cup distilled white vinegar (5%)
8 habaneros
1 bell pepper or 4 small Anaheim peppers
5 cups sugar
1 1/2 pkgs. powdered fruit pectin (the more than normal amount of pectin is needed because the enzymes in the pineapple interferes with the jam setting up)

Mince the peppers once you have de-seeded, de-veined, and de-stemmed them. Put the peppers, pineapple chunks, & vinegar in a food processor or blender and puree the mixture. Then place the mixture in a pot with the sugar and boil for 20 minutes. Add the pectin and continue boiling for 1 minute. Pour in hot sterilized jars with 1/4" headspace and process in a water bath for 10 minutes.

How about drying the peppers and making your own chili rub? Or doing a chili/garlic/basil oil or vinegar? I have also made homemade batter-fried cream cheese stuffed jalapenos and Fresno chilis... but you need pretty good size chilis to work with. I have a mango pepper jam recipe I can share too, if you're not a pineapple person.

I like to eat them for breakfast.

I heat up a tortilla in the pan and add cheese, papaya and peppers and let it all heat up until the cheese is melted . That is a delicious breakfast for me.

Or as I mentioned in the other post I stuff my peppers with goat cheese, sun=dried tomatoes, garlic and some other grated cheese and either fry them in the pan or bake them in the oven. A modified chile relleno.

. . . . such a pepper-talented group!



Steve
who learned a little about a new pepper - Fresno!

Chickie'sMomaInNH said:

my dh makes habanero hot pepper jelly but he will smear some cream cheese on a cracker and then put a small amount of the jelly on top of that! he LOVES hot stuff like that! a BYC friend and her dh use the jelly in making pasta sauce to spice it up! it is wonderful and not as hot as you would expect! they did up meatballs in pasta sauce for one of her swaps and everyone got to try them and loved the taste.

Click to expand...

I make hot pepper jelly as well... lots of hot peppers, but it will get milder if you remove the seeds before jamming. Always goes good with creamcheese & ritz!