In the springtime, I approach food preservation as if it were an act of art. My jams are fussed over, with plenty of thought given to size of my fruit dice and maceration times. My pickles are packed into jars with great precision and accuracy. That time of year, I’m simply delighted to be anticipating the coming abundance.
Come August, my elevated aspirations are gone. I can to get it done, to get those bits of summer into their respective jars before the season is gone and I’m left with the potatoes, storage squash and kale of winter (I’m a big fan of all those vegetables, but they don’t excite me the way a peach does). And so my many acts of preservation become a bit frenzied and as easy as I can make them.
Take the jalapeno peppers I pickled recently. I bought a pound when we were in New York a few weeks ago because I wanted to bring back some little bit of the Union Square Green Market. The berries were too fragile and I didn’t see any garlic that was clean enough for my suitcase. Jalapenos are sturdy little guys and so I knew they’d withstand the rigors of the MegaBus. Plus a pound cost a mere $3, which I believe is the perfect price point for an edible souvenir.
When I got them home, I washed and halved them (please do get yourself some gloves to wear when dealing with hot peppers. I gave myself a humdinger of a capsaicin burn this time around), packed them into jars and topped them with a very basic brine.
I didn’t spice my brine at all, because I wasn’t trying to create an artisinal condiment or a pickle to be eaten on its own. I’ll use these peppers throughout the year as an ingredient in things and so I want the flavors of the peppers to remain clear and identifiable. Several will join various batches of salsa and most the rest will spice up pots of turkey chili.
The reason I like this kind of utilitarian canning is that by investing $3 and 35 minutes of effort, I’ve created something that will fill a kitchen need all year round. It breaks no culinary ground, but fills me with joy nonetheless. It also doesn’t hurt to know that I have something to turn to come January when my taste buds are in desperate need of revival.
Very Basic Pickled Jalapenos
This technique can be used for just about any small, hot pepper. Measurements are for 1 pound of peppers and yield approximately 2 1/2 pints. Recipe can be doubled.
1 pound of jalapeno peppers, sliced in half lengthwise
2 cups white vinegar
2 cups filtered water
2 tablespoons pickling salt
Pack clean, hot jars with peppers. Pour hot brine over top. Bubble your jars thoroughly by tapping them firmly on the countertop and using a wooden chopstick to release any stubborn bubbles. Wipe rims, apply lids and bands.
Process in a boiling water canner for 10 minutes. Store in cool, dark place for up to a year.
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Love it. I love unfancy & utilitarian! Because I’ll actually use it. Unlike my many, many jars of pinor-rhubarb-rosemary jam and the like.
Pickled peppers. Sigh. Must hit the farmers market…I plant 8 kinds and they got decimated by slugs and the dismal summer has only brought 2 peppers on my starts.
I will make these though!
Canning something “utilitarian” style is better than canning nothing at all! I will have to keep this in mind the rest of the season. It’s a great mindset to have when you the last thing you feel like is waiting 45 minutes for your hot water bath to heat up again.
Plus, I would think that pickled jalapenos are exciting, regardless of the presence of spices in the brine or not!
I’ll do this this year when I don’t have enough for hot pickled peppers of various kinds. I guess you can do this with Hungarian hots too. I froze my jalapenos in the past, but I think I might can them this year r/t freezer space that is very limited this year. Thanks for another great recipe.
Hi there! Love this recipe..so easy for a first time canner myself. My question though is I have a few different peppers growing..jalapenos, banana and long red ones..can i mix them all together in the same jars? Love your blog btw
Hi, Kimberly. I came onto this blog to find a simple non-pickled recipe because the one that I have *calls* for a couple of different kinds. The recipe is in the Ball Blue Book, and they are not pickled. Here it is if you don’t have the book:
1 pound jalapeno peppers 6 cups vinegar
1 1/2 pounds banana peppers 2 cups water
1/4 pound serrano peppers 3 garlic cloves, crushed
Leave peppers whole or cut into 1-inch pieces. Mix peppers together. Combine vinegar, water & garlic (garlic will be removed later) in a large pan. Bring to a boil; reduce heat & simmer 5 minutes. Discard garlic. Pack peppers into hot pint jars & ladle hot mixture over them, leaving 1/4″ headspace and removing any air bubbles.Adjust caps & process in a boiling water canner for 10 minutes. Yields about 5 pints. (I imagine you could use any pepper mixture, I don’t know why not, but you might want to ask) Ball’s telephone # is 1-800-240-3340. Hope this helps!
Thanks Marisa, this is exactly the kind of recipe I was looking for! Could I safely add several cloves of garlic? I get the impression that you can add a lot more to pickles than to fruit products, but I want to check with the expert to make sure!
Also (sorry to add another comment) – can this be done in smaller jars, like half pints? (I don’t think I could use all those peppers in the time it would take them to go bad.) How would that affect the processing time?
Thank you for this! There are so many fancy-pants recipes out there and so little use that I find for them in the kitchen. This post is inspiring to me:)
These would make a great addition to enchiladas as well. Thanks again for great inspiration, Marisa!
I think we’ll be pickling peppers this week too. I make my husband do the chopping since he’s the one who really likes them and is less sensitive to them it seems. Everyone wears gloves though. While discussing it the other night (he was eating some of the last jar of pickled jalapenos from last year that happened to be sliced, not diced) he said that this year he’s dicing them all. I reminded him that at the end of 4 pounds of jalapenos he might be all for the quick and easy slice. I’m all for delicious canned food but sometimes it’s just about getting it done.
I am heading to Hoboken, NJ in October. Will be staying right near The Path to NYC. Can’t wait to visit Chelsea Market and Union Square Market. Hope they will have a lot of good stuff for canning. I am so excited because my son knows New York and will be my guide for 2 wonderful days of ‘my kind of shopping.’ Will let you know how I do when I get back.
You don’t have to go to chelsea market to get peppers! Hoboken and Jersey City both have great Farmers Markets with fresh organic vegitables. Jersey City has one on Monday and Thursday’s at Grove street Path Station. You can get Peppers for $.50 each and they are organic and fresh from the farm. I usually get my pickling needs here. Also there is a Garden of Eden in Hoboken on Washington Street which also has fresh organic veggies for canning!
Thanks, Francis. Sorry it took me so long to get back, been doing a lot of canning before knee replacement surgery. I will be sure to go to these markets when I visit my son next; probably not until next spring.
Marisa, it may be unfancy but you always seem to have what I need. I think this will work perfectly with the Hatch peppers we have right now.
Thanks – this is a great idea, simple and useful – I appreciated it and will be putting some up soon!
These are so usable (is that a word?). Great way to save summer. I made several batches of your Dilly Beans last week. Loved them. Thanks for the recipe.
Such a great ingredient to have on hand…I am so jealous of your pantry.
[...] only give to one or two people with exploratory palates. Yesterday’s Food in Jars post about pickled jalapenos is a good example; I go through these in winter pretty quickly, but I have a good source for [...]
Thank you! I just got a great deal on some jalapenos last week and no time for salsa, so this is perfect. I was also wondering about processing time for a 1/2 pint…
Sorry for the general answers, but…
You can add other peppers, and you can include garlic.
Processing time is the same for quarter, half and full pints. The rule of thumb with processing is that you never reduce the processing time for smaller jars, but you always increase it for larger jars.
I turned my garden jalapenos, plus some random fish peppers, banana peppers and green bell peppers — into hot pepper jelly yesterday. We like it hot, so I left all the jalapeno seeds in the mix.
Super yummy glazed over porkchops, or served with cream cheese.
Utilitarian canning is the best thing you can do Marisa. Those Fancy preserves make for nice blog posts but when you are trying to put up enough produce to last your family a year there just isn’t time – and nor do I want to be eating all that sugar (or supporting the sugar companies making all that genetically modified, non-fair trade sugar) anyway. I’m glad to see something like this on here. You are keeping it real. You are doing more with this post to stick it to Monsanto than probably any other post you’ve ever done.
I love the comforting feeling that a well stocked pantry provides, don’t you? Especially when I look out the window and I see that nobody’s getting out of the driveway today…until the snow plow comes by, that is!
We had a little hot pepper bush that produced its heart out this summer, so I did this too. Not sure what exactly I’ll do with them, but I figured they’d be good for something.
Mine are all red – so pretty!
I have a jalapeno plant bursting with peppers – gonna try this recipe as a quick way to deal with them. What is the jar headspace for this recipe? Thanks!
Robin, leave yourself between 1/2 and 1/4 inch of headspace.
My hubs would love these canned jalapenos. A small amount of these peppers adds so much to recipes. It will be so fun to meet you at BlogHer Food
Marla, glad you like the recipe! And yes, see you at BlogHer Food.
Marisa: I made these in half and quarter pints last night with jalapenos a coworker grew. So easy. They’ll be great in the winter, and will make nice little gifts too. Thank you!
6 pints of pickled peppers in the canner at this very moment! Thanks for posting this, Marisa. I’ve been walking past the pecks of peppers at the farmers markets recently and wondering what to do with them. Spicy food awaits us!
I’ve never tried these before and my dad would actually adore them! Thanks so much for the detailed instructions. I just did a post today about making pickles – I just recently tried them for the first time and they turned out fabulous! Check it out if you have time: http://www.diyreviews.net/2010/how-to-make-pickles-the-easy-way/
I just finished putting up one jar. I can’t wait to open it later in the year to see how they taste. I have more, but am planning on freezing them. I don’t have enough jars right now.
Thanks for the recipe
If you burn your hands from the pepper oils, try rubbing milk of magnesia or Maalox on them.
Marissa, those peppers are AWESOME! I made my first batch last week and hubby is completely addicted, so batch #2 is cooling on the counter right now. This time I made a Christmas mix, I had a bunch of red ones on the plant so I mixed the green & red. I started canning this year to save on groceries and eat better since it’s all coming from our garden, no pesticide. My goal is to replicate the food I usually buy at the groceries, and this is just it! Thanks for a great recipe, we’ll be making it for years to come.
[...] together, then my mom canned the green beans for me, and I canned the jalapenos myself using this recipe. Let’s hope nobody get botulism! Kidding ……….. kinda ……not [...]
[...] order based on her fantastic picture of what 60lbs of tomatoes looks like, and her recipe for Unfancy Pickled Jalapeno recipe answered my question about what to do with 5lbs of jalapenos. Somehow I didn’t end up [...]
[...] it due to the safe acidity levels that need to be reached for preservation). She provided a basic jalapeno pickling recipe only using peppers and also directed me to a site called Simply Recipes where to my excitement was [...]
[...] (and in fact put up one basic jar Monday night, following Marisa’s instructions over at Food in Jars), I wanted something more interesting. More creative. More [...]
Any tips on keeping the peppers crisp? We tried pickling lime, but it sucked all the flavor out of the peppers.
Hi Marisa – I’ve been enjoying the batch that I made from this recipe all winter. One question though – all the peppers we canned are mushy and my boyfriend (the cook in our arrangement) is longing for crispier pickled peppers. Any ideas on a solution? Thanks so much!
I’m sorry to hear that your pickles are a bit mushy. The first thing you can do to preserve texture is to start with the freshest produce you can. Additionally, if you start with sterilized jars, you can reduce the processing time to 5 minutes, which should help a bit more. Beyond that, you just sort of have to accept that a pickled item is never going to have the snap that it has when fresh.
[...] opened. Same thing with peppers – I didn’t have a fresh pepper so I minced up a few unfancy pickled jalapeño [...]
I just made the jalapeno pickles. I sliced them in coins instead. Obviously, we haven’t tried them yet, but I feel SUCH a sense of accomplishment! I hope we get enough jalapenos in our garden to do another batch.
As for getting the jalapenos crisper, what about those crisper granules that Ball has out now? I haven’t tried them yet, so I don’t know how they would be.
[...] I Love: Marisa’s Unfancy Pickled Jalapenos [pictured] And her Dilly Beans [in the corn salad!] Schezuan Green Beans from Put Em Up [pictured] [...]
Hi Marissa: I love this recipe. Made it last year and enjoyed these all through out the year in different recipes for example homemade jalapeno tortillas. Anyway, I was reading the comments and someone mentioned that it was okay to add garlic. This sounds so good to me and would love to give it a try but want to make sure it is safe to still water bath. I thought it was always required to pressure can when using garlic. Could you clear this for me please?
When you pickle something, you eliminate the need for the pressure canner. So you can safely add garlic to this recipe.
Thank you so much:) Tonight I have a date with jalapenos and garlic:)
just wondering can I dice the peppers and achive the same effect? I like both slice and diced. also can I subitute the vinegar with lemon juice? I do in my jalapeno salsa.
You are welcome to slice and dice the peppers. Do know that the finer the cut, the softer the final product will be. You cannot substitute lemon juice for the vinegar.
I made these last night. I wore gloves to slice and pack the peppers, and even to clean up the counter! But apparently I still got the juice/oil on my hand somehow, because I rubbed my eye a couple hours later and… oh god, ow. I thought I was going to have to have my fiance take me to the hospital! Luckily it subsided after 10 minutes or so. And I can’t even eat the darn things, I’m allergic to peppers!
[...] followed a very basic pickling recipe, taken from Food in Jars- Basically equal parts white vinegar and water, with a bit of salt. That’s it! Such a simple [...]
Wanted to let you know I’m working on my 2nd batch of pickled Jalapeno’s following this recipe today. Husband loves them! I was very frustrated trying to find a basic recipe for them before I found this. I cut them into thick (very thick) coins instead of the slices, but he loves them on a sandwich!
[...] Adapted, barely, from Food in Jars [...]
Wow what a harvest of jalapenos this year. I planted a dozen plants since not many grew last year. Picked 25 pounds last week to finish the harvest off and threw many small ones away that were good in the process. My gardening friend took some to a Mexican restautant and I knew the ladies at church would want to can some. I used your recipe for the five pounds I had and they turned out wonderfully. Thanks a whole bunch.
Bob.
[...] found my inspiration from this Food in Jars post. I love this blog! She has so many creative ideas for preserving! Here is the [...]
[...] array of vinegar pickled peppers from Emily. So glad to hear you like my unfancy pickled pepper [...]
Marissa, do I need to add the pickling salt to these peppers? I am on a low-sodium diet due to a medical problem. I do not use it when I pickle my regular peppers and they are fine.
The salt helps the vinegar penetrate into the peppers. Maybe reduce it but not eliminate it entirely?
now I know just what to do with those last bunch of jalapenos hanging on in my garden
Just pickled my last jalapenos from the garden using this simple recipe.
Usually I pickle veggies with water+soy sauce+vinegar mixture.
Thanks for sharing your recipe!
[...] on canning something with oil in it. So I called an audible at this point and went back to my favorite blogger’s recipe for un fancy pickled peppers. I KNOW this recipe is safe and there is nothing to say you can’t jazz it up by putting [...]
Thanks for the recipe! I made these last night but didn’t have filtered water. I just read that hard water can make the brine too weak. Should I be worried about the safety?
Can I use this to can Anaheim peppers? I get them often in my CSA in southern california and we aren’t big fans of stuffed peppers for dinner so they are better used for seasoning meals (like you mentioned in your post) but I can’t use them all before they go bad.
Thanks,
Denise
You certainly could, though since they are larger than jalapenos, they’d be best done in strips.
Thank you for the recipe …as soon as my newly planted jalapeño plants being to bear fruit, I will be trying this out – and many of your other delicious recipes. And I completely agree with your line “it breaks no culinary ground, but fills me with joy nonetheless” … over the past year i have mastered some simple sourdough bread recipes and am carefully nurturing some fruit trees and a growing vegetable garden – and EVERY time i turn out a loaf of bread or make a dinner where a good portion of the ingredients come from my garden, I get far too ridiculously pleased with myself…such a good feeling and can’t wait to add pickled jalapeños to the happiness list!! Cheers from a VERY hot Perth, Australia
Thank you for sharing this recipe! My husband loves these!