*This recipe isn't hard. I just tell every little thing.)
Recipes at the Top - Chit Chat at the bottom!
Pepper Jelly
(Surejell)
- 14
various peppers, some sweet/some hot (50% hot peppers is good)
- 1 cup
apple cider vinegar
- ½ teaspoon
butter/margarine
- 1 box
(regular-yellow box) Surejell (I only use that brand)
- 5 cups
sugar, measured into a separate bowl
- Nitrile gloves for seeding/trimming the peppers.
- (Makes 6 pints of jam -I always use some 4 oz jars and 8 oz; washing up extras so I have enough just in case. Any partial jar at the end can be refrigerated for a "test taster")
Instructions
- Wash jars, lids and rings with soapy/hot water. (New USDA guidelines say you don’t have to sterilize jars if you are processing for 10+ minutes.) I use the dishwasher. Once the dishwasher cycle is complete, I then start my recipe while the jars, etc. remain in the hot dishwasher until time to fill.
- Wash, remove stems and seed peppers, making sure to WEAR GLOVES, avoiding eyes and other sensitive areas of the body. (Milk/yogurt will help if you have any issues though but isn’t sure fail).
- Chop the peppers or use a food processor until small like confetti.
- Place chopped peppers in 6- or 8-qt. saucepot (like a pasta pot). Add vinegar and Surejel and stir until smooth. Add butter (to reduce foaming).
- Bring mixture to full rolling boil (a boil that doesn't stop when stirred) on high heat, stirring often.
- Dump in sugar all at once. Stir well again.
- Return to full rolling boil (one that doesn’t stop at all – very “hard” simmering and bubbly) and boil exactly 1 minute. Stirring constantly.
- After boiling 1 minute - remove the pot from heat. Skim off any foam.
- Ladle into hot jars using a canning funnel (not required but super helpful), filling to within 1/2 inch of tops. Add dried lids/rings just until finger tight.
- Water bath to process for 10 minutes.
To water-bath/process (which is required): Using canner/tall pot so that the jars
will be covered completely by an inch or two of water, place the jars on the
rack. Or, if you don’t have a rack, use
a thick hand towel to submerge in the bottom of the canner to provide a barrier
between the glass jars and the hot burner.
Fill the pot /cover the jars with water by 1-2 inches.
Bring to boil on high and then turn down a little to
simmer. Boil gently 10 minutes.
After 10 minutes on a timer, turn off the burner. After a few minutes/boiling stops, remove
jars using a canning jar grabber and place them upright on towel to cool. After
jars cool, check seals by pressing centers of lids with finger. (If lids spring
back, lids are not sealed and refrigeration is necessary.) Remove rings for storing canning products.
The Chit Chat:
I’ve decided to include more life in my blog posts (when I
feel like it lol). I actually love the
journal that this blog has been for me.
I love seeing what I wrote about and what I cooked; who I cooked for;
and what stage of life we were in. These
days, I actually enjoy lots of YouTube videos and blogs of real life moments for
other people and so this is mine. I’m
going to try to do these on Fridays.
I especially enjoyed lots of special moments with my family this week. Long calls with my mom, both of us complaining about heat and no rain this October - for them in Florida and us in Missouri. I enjoyed some fun facetime calls with my grandsons/ younger daughter’s family. With my older daughter, I enjoyed our weekly Wednesday/dad’s gone bowling, Mexican outing followed by some true crime TV-the Sherri Papini story. What a sad mess that was! Always lots of kitty love going on at our house except for now, Becca and I have to text each other when one cat is inside and the other is out - because my cat Mick would kill Becca's little sweet boy kitty if given the chance.
Work was very busy and let's say picking out fall dress clothes when its nearly 90 degrees is getting old! I'm sure in February, I will miss this but for now I'm ready for cooler weather.
What did I cook?
I got some canning done last Sunday. I started out thinking it would be a breeze. I had high hopes of canning pepper jelly,
apple pie filling, making homemade pasta and making lasagna. See that beautiful apple pie filling? The pepper jelly was done before lunch and that apple pie filling? It about did me in. And no- I did not make homemade pasta or
lasagna. I was exhausted after the dang apple
pie filling.
I used a variety of peppers from my 24-plant raised bed
(lol) for the pepper jelly. Beautiful banana peppers, Tricked You Hybrid
“jalapeno” peppers, Thorixera sweet red peppers and a few red and green, Red
Ember chili peppers. Chopping the
peppers in my food processor worked great and the aroma of all of those chopped peppers was completely intoxicating for me!
Ahhh! We dearly love some pepper
jelly/cream cheese for our Friday night happy hours at home. I would like to say we use it in other ways
but pretty much I make the whole batch just for the delicious reminder of
summer in the dead of winter that it is. I share a few jars for gifts but I don’t
part with too much of it. It's that good!
After making a successful batch of pepper jelly, I tackled
the two bags of “seconds” apples that I got at the farmer’s market to can apple
pie filling. Again… about that apple pie filling. I’ve made apple pie filling in the past but
the instructions for “safe” apple pie filling have now changed. Great day! You can only use Clear Jel (no
flour allowed any more) and you have to actually BLANCH the apple slices before
making the pie filling. What the
heck! I almost didn’t do all of that JUNK
but I wanted it to be safe since I would be using it as holiday gifts. I used
the safe recipe that I found here in case you want to make some sticky sweet apple
pie filling that takes all day yourself.
By the time I got all of the apples peeled, sliced,
blanched, made the glaze, canned it, – I was OVER apple pie filling. The day was gone; we had no homemade pasta/lasagna ("Spaghetti Sunday") ; and everything was a sticky
mess! And that apple pie filling? I
don’t like it. How depressing is that. It’s sugary sweet - too sweet. You have to use a specific amount of sugar to follow the safe USDA recipe
but I am not a fan. It takes home picked,
crisp, apples and turns them into some kind of soggy, jelled pie filling like
you get in a can at the store. I will
never do it again. Never ever in a
million years. Next time I will just can apple slices for pies or stick to canning applesauce. It’s beautiful! Yep-gorgeous stuff, but too sweet.
What else did I cook?
Here's the beautiful project Doug is working on. Six plus years after our house burned, we are
getting so close. We almost have steps
to the front door! But it is a lot of block for one old man to lay.
Tuesday morning I put a ham in the crockpot and made some
Schoolhouse Dinner Roll dough by hand (I don't use a bread machine anymore since I wake up without an alarm clock at 4am-ugh). I went
ahead and made the dough balls and stuck them in a buttered pan and placed in
the fridge for baking after work. Doug buttered
the pan and then claimed not to have buttered the sides so well – when they
stuck. But they were delicious anyway
and he tried to help. Plus, he laid ALL
OF THAT BLOCK… so what can you say about a stuck dinner roll? lol I also cheated and bought prepared, Bob Evans mashed potatoes. Those things are dang good if you haven't tried them.
Wednesday supper was the local Mexican restaurant where they know
us and brought out some of our order before we even place one. Got to love small towns for that reason
alone.
Thursday was leftovers, Spanish rice for me and ham/mashed
potatoes for Doug.
And now it’s Friday – Maybe pepper jelly & cream cheese
are on tap with some other refreshments and our favorite 70’s tunes. Jessie Coulter and Tammy Wynette, maybe a little
of my latest favorite, Van Morrison, Into the Mystic – here we come!
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