Pepper Jelly on the 4th of July

How about some fireworks in your mouth! My pepper jelly is always a hit at the parties. Today I made a bunch! The sweet and spicy of the jelly mixed with the creamy of cream cheese and the crunchy of your favorite cracker makes for a perfect balance of delicious in your mouth! Here is what I did:

Finely chop three red bell peppers, two green bell peppers and 10 jalapeno peppers. I find the recipe sets up best when I do the chopping by hand as opposed to using a food processor. This is the longest part. Toss em all into a bowl. Measure out 4 cups of the peppers. Set aside. Measure out 1 cup of cider vinegar and 5 cups of sugar. Get one 1.75 oz size pectin ready (I prefer no-sugar pectin since everything I use that with sets up so nicely but you can use regular too).

Get your jars ready. I always have three pints and one half pint worth of jelly when all is said and done so whatever combination of jars works for you. My next batch I will use all half pints cuz I know some people who want some of this jelly. I want to be able to give some away but when you are all finished after all the work it took to get JUST THREE PINTS a person just doesn’t wanna give a whole bunch of this gold away. 🙂

Okay, get your canner ready. Put it on high heat. It needs to be boiling by the time you are ready for the water bath part.

Okay, so, Toss the peppers into a large pot with the cider vinegar and pectin and bring to a boil stirring continuously.

Add the sugar and bring it back to a boil stirring continuously.

Let it boil for 60 seconds then remove from heat. Using a food funnel (if you don’t have one no worries just clean the rim of the jar with a damp rag when you are finished) ladle jelly into hot jars leaving an inch of head room. Wipe any mess that may have been left on the rim and add lids. Ring jars, tightening just slightly.

Process in water bath for five minutes. Use jar tongs to take the jars out of the water and set on cooling racks or dish towel to cool. The tops should pop within a few minutes. Check seal in twelve hours.

The peppers may have gathered at the top. Just stir it all together before pouring over cream cheese. I have a friend who cooks her chicken in this jelly and makes sort of an asian dinner out of it. I suppose there are a million things that could be done with this jelly. Oh ya, I put it on a homemade sausage egg MacMuffin once. Hubby thought it was amazing!

What could you do with this?

Happy canning!