Candied Jalapenos

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Fresh jalapeno peppers, ready for canning.

 I'm making great progress on my new hot sauce book. I've discovered something surprising while having friends taste-test my hot sauce recipes. About a third of the people I know, don't know the difference between hot sauce and salsa. I'm amazed! To me it's like comparing cauliflower and broccoli, two distinctly different things. I have decided to include an extra paragraph in the hot sauce book, explaining that hot sauce is a condiment you use by the drop to season food - such as on eggs, in soup, etc. Salsa, by contrast, is for dipping. You eat it with chips but you would never eat hot sauce that way.


I decided to add 4 or 5 recipes at the very end of the book under the category of "Hot But Not Sauced." It includes habanero-peach jelly, pickled peppers and my recipe for candied jalapenos. If you haven't tasted candied jalapenos, and you like moderately hot things, these are a treat. On a hamburger, or tuna salad sandwich, or, as I like them, as a topping on ice cream! They have very little heat, mellowed by the sugar, but the taste is excellent. See what you think.

Candied Jalapeno peppers are outstanding on vanilla ice cream!

Candied Jalapeno Peppers

1 pound fresh jalapenos (there are about 28-30 in a pound), stems removed
2 cups white vinegar
3 1/2 cups sugar
1 3-inch stick cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
* 1/8 teaspoon Pickle Crisp, optional

1 - Slice peppers into rounds about 1/4 inch thick

2 - Combine vinegar, sugar and salt in a saucepan. Bring to a boil and boil hard for 6 minutes, or until the syrup begins to thicken slightly.

3 - Add the pepper slices and cook for 2 minutes.

4 - Remove mixture from heat, discard cinnamon stick and spoon pepper rounds into sterile half-pint jelly jars and fill with the hot syrup. Add 1/8 teaspoon Pickle Crisp to each jar. Wipe jar rims with damp paper towel. Attach lids and store in the refrigerator where they keep for months.  (You could also can these using the water bath method, 10 minutes, which is what I chose to do). The recipe makes 4 half-pint jars.

*Note: I use 1/8 teaspoon Pickle Crisp added to each jar before sealing to make a slightly crisper pickle. I also use it when I make pickled peppers, like these below.

Pickled peppers.