Red Pepper Jelly
Red Pepper Jelly, you say? What the…?
Jepp, Red Pepper Jelly. Just like it says on the tin. Back on Vancouver Island in the ‘70s, if you were shopping in a few special places, like the Coombs Country Market, if you were lucky you could get jars of ‘Kelly’s Red Pepper Jelly’, in mild or hot form. Now I never did learn who ‘Kelly’ was, but we sure loved her (at least we thought it a her at the time…) Red Pepper Jelly.
Why Red Pepper Jelly? Well first of the all it was the colour. They were little jars of pure sunshine, summer in a jar. Then there was the way a small spoonful of it would sit on the plate, semi-transparent and glowing. And of course, then there was the flavour. Such a combination! Sweetness, sourness, and the absolute essence of capiscum. It had a bit of ‘nectar of the gods’ about it and we always picked some up whenever it was available.
Since then, wherever I have lived or travelled I have always kept an eye out for something similar. In South Eastern Europe they have Ayvar – a kind of compote of red peppers and sugar and vinegar. Once in Aberdeen my neighbour brought some ayvar back from her mom in Bulgaria and it was pretty special – summer in a jar. But it is more of a paste than a jelly. In other places I have had hot pepper jelly as an accompanyment to a restaurant meal, but the emphasis with this was on the hot, not the capsicum flavour. So, having warmed up on the jams mentioned in the previous page, it seemed the right time to tackle this mysterious food of the Gods.
Jepp, Red Pepper Jelly. Just like it says on the tin. Back on Vancouver Island in the ‘70s, if you were shopping in a few special places, like the Coombs Country Market, if you were lucky you could get jars of ‘Kelly’s Red Pepper Jelly’, in mild or hot form. Now I never did learn who ‘Kelly’ was, but we sure loved her (at least we thought it a her at the time…) Red Pepper Jelly.
Why Red Pepper Jelly? Well first of the all it was the colour. They were little jars of pure sunshine, summer in a jar. Then there was the way a small spoonful of it would sit on the plate, semi-transparent and glowing. And of course, then there was the flavour. Such a combination! Sweetness, sourness, and the absolute essence of capiscum. It had a bit of ‘nectar of the gods’ about it and we always picked some up whenever it was available.
Since then, wherever I have lived or travelled I have always kept an eye out for something similar. In South Eastern Europe they have Ayvar – a kind of compote of red peppers and sugar and vinegar. Once in Aberdeen my neighbour brought some ayvar back from her mom in Bulgaria and it was pretty special – summer in a jar. But it is more of a paste than a jelly. In other places I have had hot pepper jelly as an accompanyment to a restaurant meal, but the emphasis with this was on the hot, not the capsicum flavour. So, having warmed up on the jams mentioned in the previous page, it seemed the right time to tackle this mysterious food of the Gods.
We are fortunate here in Norway to have an alternative supply chain to the monolithic supermarket supply chain that so dominates here. These are the ‘Internasjonalt’ or ‘Asiatisk’ food shops. And interestingly, their fruit and vegetables seem to come from another supply chain altogether. They stock Turkish peppers, white courgettes, and many other vegetables and fruit. So I went to my local Internasjonal Mat Senteret and negotiated for 6 kg of red bell peppers. That’s two large grocery bags of them. I chose the ordinary bell peppers because of their thick flesh. I could have mix and matched the many other colours and shapes of peppers they stock, but I stuck with these for the initial experiments.
A day of research did not turn up a recipe for Red Pepper Jelly, but did turn up some interesting guides for this kind of food preservation. Perhaps the most useful were three guides from the Clemson Cooperative Extension service of the US State of South Carolina. You can find the guide here, and if you look, you will find lots of other very useful guides on food preservation too.
And the one thing it impressed on me was that red peppers were not like sour berries. They do not have much pectin in them and this must be compensated for – no skimping on the sugar or pectin here – and they must be processed in a hot water bath in order to avoid nasty things like botulism. Now most small batch jam recipes produce fridge jam (without boiling the filled jars to seal them) and often these days are low sugar or low/no pectin recipes. That wouldn’t do here. So this process takes quite a bit longer and has a bit more faff to it. But, tis well worth it.
The Guides present a fairly complicated picture, but then when you are preserving food, using natural processes, you always are using existing agents in the world to do your job for you, and they usually need fairly narrow environmental windows to work. Think of cheese making, or preserving dry sausage.... but actually it distills down to a fair simple set of factors. They are:
Fruit -- Pectin -- Sugar -- Acid
The Fruit matters, particularly in terms of its 'sourness' as fairly sour fruit has lots of pectin and lots of acid. The guides often advise including at least 1/4 of unripe fruit in the mix to maximize this. Of course, if you are adding Pectin, then you can use ripe fruit. The sugar is both the setting agent and the preservative, and if you do not use enough, niether will happen. And there needs to be acidity to the mixture too, particularly for a good set.
General principles seem to be that 1 cup of fruit needs at least 3/4 cup of sugar and 1 1/2 teaspoons of pectin. For fruit which is not tart like berries, you need to use lemon, or vinegar to increase the acidity. My second batch set, but the texture was a bit inconsistent - more like patches of set jelly immersed in a more liquid syrup. I incrased the acidity for the next batch and it worked perfectly. Given that your fruit will always vary in acidity, sweetness, etc., you need to keep these four variables in mind and respond to the raw fruit that you start with. Adjust the recipe according to what you know, and what you can taste. One guide advised, for example, that you should taste the vinegar quite strongly in the mix for things like red peppers.
One thing I discovered is that Nordmen do not seem to make preserves very much any more. It was a struggle to find jars at first, and tools were impossible. Even figuring out the correct norsk words took a bit of work. And even in the Landhandles i couldn't find anything but jars. In the end I ordered a jam jar tong set from Amazon to juggle the boiling hot jars, and had to improvise a rack at the bottom of my canning pot so the jars were not on the extra hot bottom of the pan. In fact,I used egg rings (!) as a rack, but am still looking out for one that fits my pan. Actually, searching Amazon.co.uk and Lakeland stores – both my usual go-to’s for obscure cooking supplies, it was hard to find canners at all. Remember those blue speckled enamelled steel canning pots? I sure do. In Nanaimo we even had a pressure canner, so we could preserve salmon. I never saw a pressure canner advertised at all, and only one example of the enamelled hot water bath canner – and the supplier wouldn’t ship to Norway. Of course, where there is a will there is a way. But it makes me start to think that perhaps hardly anyone is canning preserves any more, anywhere.
A day of research did not turn up a recipe for Red Pepper Jelly, but did turn up some interesting guides for this kind of food preservation. Perhaps the most useful were three guides from the Clemson Cooperative Extension service of the US State of South Carolina. You can find the guide here, and if you look, you will find lots of other very useful guides on food preservation too.
And the one thing it impressed on me was that red peppers were not like sour berries. They do not have much pectin in them and this must be compensated for – no skimping on the sugar or pectin here – and they must be processed in a hot water bath in order to avoid nasty things like botulism. Now most small batch jam recipes produce fridge jam (without boiling the filled jars to seal them) and often these days are low sugar or low/no pectin recipes. That wouldn’t do here. So this process takes quite a bit longer and has a bit more faff to it. But, tis well worth it.
The Guides present a fairly complicated picture, but then when you are preserving food, using natural processes, you always are using existing agents in the world to do your job for you, and they usually need fairly narrow environmental windows to work. Think of cheese making, or preserving dry sausage.... but actually it distills down to a fair simple set of factors. They are:
Fruit -- Pectin -- Sugar -- Acid
The Fruit matters, particularly in terms of its 'sourness' as fairly sour fruit has lots of pectin and lots of acid. The guides often advise including at least 1/4 of unripe fruit in the mix to maximize this. Of course, if you are adding Pectin, then you can use ripe fruit. The sugar is both the setting agent and the preservative, and if you do not use enough, niether will happen. And there needs to be acidity to the mixture too, particularly for a good set.
General principles seem to be that 1 cup of fruit needs at least 3/4 cup of sugar and 1 1/2 teaspoons of pectin. For fruit which is not tart like berries, you need to use lemon, or vinegar to increase the acidity. My second batch set, but the texture was a bit inconsistent - more like patches of set jelly immersed in a more liquid syrup. I incrased the acidity for the next batch and it worked perfectly. Given that your fruit will always vary in acidity, sweetness, etc., you need to keep these four variables in mind and respond to the raw fruit that you start with. Adjust the recipe according to what you know, and what you can taste. One guide advised, for example, that you should taste the vinegar quite strongly in the mix for things like red peppers.
One thing I discovered is that Nordmen do not seem to make preserves very much any more. It was a struggle to find jars at first, and tools were impossible. Even figuring out the correct norsk words took a bit of work. And even in the Landhandles i couldn't find anything but jars. In the end I ordered a jam jar tong set from Amazon to juggle the boiling hot jars, and had to improvise a rack at the bottom of my canning pot so the jars were not on the extra hot bottom of the pan. In fact,I used egg rings (!) as a rack, but am still looking out for one that fits my pan. Actually, searching Amazon.co.uk and Lakeland stores – both my usual go-to’s for obscure cooking supplies, it was hard to find canners at all. Remember those blue speckled enamelled steel canning pots? I sure do. In Nanaimo we even had a pressure canner, so we could preserve salmon. I never saw a pressure canner advertised at all, and only one example of the enamelled hot water bath canner – and the supplier wouldn’t ship to Norway. Of course, where there is a will there is a way. But it makes me start to think that perhaps hardly anyone is canning preserves any more, anywhere.
Rhys’ Red Pepper Jelly Recipe
Ingredients
6 large peppers (roasted)
6 cups blended peppers -- makes (5 ½ C juice)
5 C sugar
1 whole pkg Certo powdered pectin
1 ½ cup vinegar.
Makes five 250 ml jars
Method
Before you start on the peppers, prepare your jars. I use jam jars with fixed lids, as that is all I could get here. I would prefer the ring lids, but there you go. One thing you must be aware of is the need to heat the glass jars up before hand. I had three crack before I got it right. I soak them in very hot tap water first. Then when they are warm I put them in a large casserole and fill them with boiling water. I also add an inch to the pan. They then go in a 150 C oven for 15 minutes. Once the time is past I just leave them in the oven with the heat off. The lids go in a small pan with boiling water. I let them simmer for 15 minutes and then turn the heat off. They are then ready to go. One more thing I do at this time is start the hot water bath water heating up, as it takes a while. This can go on whilst you are preparing the peppers.
6 large peppers (roasted)
6 cups blended peppers -- makes (5 ½ C juice)
5 C sugar
1 whole pkg Certo powdered pectin
1 ½ cup vinegar.
Makes five 250 ml jars
Method
Before you start on the peppers, prepare your jars. I use jam jars with fixed lids, as that is all I could get here. I would prefer the ring lids, but there you go. One thing you must be aware of is the need to heat the glass jars up before hand. I had three crack before I got it right. I soak them in very hot tap water first. Then when they are warm I put them in a large casserole and fill them with boiling water. I also add an inch to the pan. They then go in a 150 C oven for 15 minutes. Once the time is past I just leave them in the oven with the heat off. The lids go in a small pan with boiling water. I let them simmer for 15 minutes and then turn the heat off. They are then ready to go. One more thing I do at this time is start the hot water bath water heating up, as it takes a while. This can go on whilst you are preparing the peppers.
Take the peppers and cut them up roughly. Put half of the peppers in a food processor and add ¾ cup of the vinegar. Blitz them until they are almost liquid. Pour into a large stainless steel pan. Process the other half of the peppers and the other ¾ cup of vinegar. Put them into the pan over medium-high heat. As they begin to boil, add the sugar and mix thoroughly. Taste the result and assure yourself it is acid enough and sweet enough. Boil the fruit for 10 minutes at a rolling boil – it should boil enough that the stirring (and you must stir it a lot!) does not knock back the bubbles. Do this on a reduced medium heat to not ‘burn’ the liquid.
When boiled and stirred you will see that a scum forms on the surface of the liquid. Carefully skim this off as it will cloud the jelly later.
Then pour the contents of the pan through a sieve to separate the liquid out. I have read that if you force the liquid out of the sieve with a spoon it will cloud the resulting jelly, but did not find this to be so. So I extract as much juice as possible from the pulp and put it back on the stove.
Get it boiling again into a rolling boil and add the powdered pectin. Once it boils again let it go for exactly one minute, then remove from the heat. You will need to skim it again.
Remove your jars from the oven and drain them. Put them on a tray on paper towels to catch the drips. I use a ‘jam spout’ which has a mouth the same size as canning jars, which does make the pouring much smoother and cleaner. So take your spout and pour away!
Fill them to about ½ to 1 cm from the top. Wipe the rims clean and fasten your hot lids to them. The key here is to tighten them enough that they do not leak or detach in the hot water bath, but not so tight that the air inside them cannot escape when heated. (I lost two jars to this the first time…)
Place them gently in the hot water bath with the water already gently boiling. Set them so they don’t touch each other if possible. Bring the water back up to a boil and process them for five minutes. Remove to a wire cooling rack and leave until cool. You will hear the lids popping tight as they cool.
Fill them to about ½ to 1 cm from the top. Wipe the rims clean and fasten your hot lids to them. The key here is to tighten them enough that they do not leak or detach in the hot water bath, but not so tight that the air inside them cannot escape when heated. (I lost two jars to this the first time…)
Place them gently in the hot water bath with the water already gently boiling. Set them so they don’t touch each other if possible. Bring the water back up to a boil and process them for five minutes. Remove to a wire cooling rack and leave until cool. You will hear the lids popping tight as they cool.
And there you have it. A treat for the tongue. A treat for the eye. And probably one of the more welcome home made food gifts. And don’t stop there. Think about what else you can make jellies out of. Mint jelly? Adult alcohol jellies. Mixed flavours like white currant and ginger. There are so many possibilities. Enjoy!
