06 October 2024

Picking and pickling a peck of peppers (or two)

I had to look it up, but a peck of peppers is a quarter of a bushel, or around 10 pounds. The word "frost" has been bandied about in the weather forecast, so I thought it might be a good idea to pick the peppers. The warm September has made up for a coolish summer and the plants were heavy with fruit. 

I picked the jalapeƱos yesterday (3.5kg) and the sweet peppers today (6.5kg). A grand total of 10kg, or 22 pounds. 


 I sliced all the jalapeƱos and pickled about half of them using brine and the hot-water canning method...


... and open froze the rest.  Once frozen, I packed them into a single large plastic freezer bag, so I can just remove handfuls as and when I need some.

The sweet peppers were a mix of Antohi, Golden Marconi and Cubanelles.

I* washed them, cut off the tops, halved and deseeded them, then cooked them with the cut side down under the broiler/grill for seven minutes, until the skins were blackened. I found doing around twelve peppers in each batch worked well.


 Then I put them in a covered plastic tub to cool down, before removing the skins and packing them into glass jars. Then I added water with a little salt in it to the jars and pressure canned them for 35 minutes.


 Six kilos of fresh peppers ended up as three one-kilo/quart jars of processed fruit.

*Child#2 took over this job half way through and this speeded up the process dramatically. I definitely recommend getting a friend or family member involved with jobs like this!