These past few weeks have been very busy. Between preserving the last few veggies from the garden, preparing our cars for winter, and doing numerous school runs, I have barely had the time to reflect on the ending fall season. Thankfully, this is when taking pics comes in handy. My thoughts may be far and away, but the pics are here to stay with us forever 🙂
We had an abundant homegrown harvest, despite starting growing very late, upon our return from New Orleans (you can check out my posts on our summer trip here, here, here and here). We bought a couple of hot pepper plants from the local nursery, that produced a steady flow of spicy peppers.
What to make with hot peppers? The easiest and quickest recipe ever 🙂
Growing up, I remember going to the local farmers’ market with my mom and searching for the hottest peppers I could find. I was in charge of picking up peppers, hoping that the ones I was getting would be hot enough for my father, who was a big fan of spicy foods. Most of the time, he would eat the peppers raw with his lunch and/or dinner, but sometimes we had too many, and my mother would preserve them through pickling.
My mom would never follow exact recipes and/or measurements, and I presume this recipe is not USDA approved. Still, we have been pickling peppers using this method for a long time, with not adverse reactions. My advice is for you to use it only if you feel comfortable 🙂
For this recipe, you need clean and dry jars and hot peppers, pickling salt, and a steady supply of vinegar. You can leave the peppers whole or you can slice them. If you do the latter, the pickling will occur faster than if you leave them whole. I usually slice the peppers if I find blemishes or dark spots that need to be removed.
Back in the day, we would use white wine vinegar, the only kind of vinegar that was available on the market. Nowadays, I use Azure Standard apple cider vinegar “with the mother.” I have been a customer of Azure Standard for several years now, and I love their wholesome products and their holistic business model. You can check out Azure Standard here. My comprehensive review of Azure Standard is coming up soon 🙂
I fill the jars with peppers evenly distributed, and then I sprinkle pickling salt inside the jar (the ratio I use is 1tbsp salt per 1 pint-size jar, and I multiply the quantity for larger jars). I pour unheated, room temperature vinegar over the peppers, making sure they are completely submerged in vinegar. I seal the jars – and that’s it!
Allow for 2 weeks for the pickling to occur, after which you can open the jars and enjoy.
I store the unopened jars in a dark place in the basement, and the opened jars in the fridge.
In addition to hot peppers, we also grew amazing sweet purple peppers…
…tomatoes…
…and lots and lots of herbs, such as mint…
… thyme, and oregano.
We used tomatoes and peppers in salads and we made some tomato sauce too, to avoid waste. We mostly grew indeterminate tomatoes, along with a couple of Tiny Tim determinate tomatoes, which we have now moved inside the house.
You can find my discussion of determinate and indeterminate tomatoes here.
We were left with quite a few green tomatoes when the first frost came in. Stay tuned to see what I made with those – a family favorite recipe, coming up soon 🙂
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