If you grow chillies, you will know that the end of the season is a bonanza of fruit (yes believe it or not they are fruit, but don’t put them in your fruit salad). Chillies can deliver a plethora of poblanos, an abundance of anchos, a glut of ghost peppers, a heap of Jalapeños, an overabundance of … anyway I’m pretty sure you get the idea. While they all have their own heat and uses in cooking, most of them (in my opinion) will be amazing as Pickled Chillies.
The last few harvests can be very abundant and leave you wondering what to do with them all, I have a number of suggestions, the first one is my Green Chilli Sauce (I’ll let you into a little secret, if you use the same recipe and use Red Chillies, it becomes Red Chilli Sauce), any excess that you can’t cope with can be frozen and made into sauce later, chopped and included in dishes or grated as chilli snow over a finished dish that you’ve made mild for those who can’t cope with the heat, to add the heat that you have now become addicted to.
Whatever you do though, you must at least will pickle some. It took me over 20 years of growing chillies before I started making pickled chillies and now I can’t get enough of them. This is so easy and within an hour or so, you will have a jars and jars of pickled awesomeness that you can call on for months to liven up an entree, main or dessert (if that’s what you like in a dessert)!
This year I pickled 1.5kg of chillies, I put them in separate jars until I had a few left over that weren’t enough for their own jar, so I mixed them up for a pickled chilli medley. This is the jar that I opened first as I could then try them all at once and decide what order I should open the other jars in.
Ingredients
Method
- Wash and dry chillies, then slice them into your desired serving size
- Combine the pickling liquid ingredients in a large saucepan, bring to a boil for a couple of minutes and turn off the heat and leave for five minutes to cool slightly.
- Do whatever prep you normally do for bottling, I normally preheat the oven to 160℃/320℉, wash the jars thoroughly and place them upside down on an oven tray in the oven for about 15 minutes (check the instructions with the jars as they might not recommend the oven). Bring them out of the oven about 5 minutes before bottling. I also place the lids (not the ring) in a bowl and pour boiling water over them and let sit for a couple of minutes before using to seal.
- Fill jars with chillies, make sure they are fairly tightly packed as they will shrink down when the hot liquid goes in. Ladle the hot pickling liquid into the jars (it's best to use a wide funnel) leaving ½cm/0.2in at the top.
- Place the lids on and the rings and tighten. Invert the jars and check after a couple of hours that the seal button has gone down.
- These will be good to eat the next day, but will improve over time (not too long though).
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