Adventures in canning

My first foray in to canning was with my dear friend Suzanne and her mom. Her mom is a home making guru and has canned many, many things. She helped Suz and I "put up" (a little canning speak heh heh) about 24 jars of blackberry jam. Uh, we have two jars left. It was really good.

Suz instagrammed it up

So for my next trick I enlisted the help of my guru, Mike. Mostly I wanted him to chop the peppers and the garlic for the hot pepper jelly. Recipe here.

Here he is chopping away! I chopped the more benign red and green bell peppers.

Once all the chopping action was finished, I placed the jars in a large pot with a a little bit of water and let them get really hot, just a little less than boiling.

Mike had a little tray for them so the water could circulate

After we got the jars going, we put the little flats for the lids in another pan with some water and turned that on medium. Just a little less than boiling. Then it was time for the jelly making!

We tossed in a cup of very nicely diced jalepeno peppers, and some awesomely diced red and green bell pepper,  garlic, SIX cups of sugar (oh my) and apple cider vinegar. The recipe called for white vinegar but all we had was the apple cider vinegar. It worked just fine. 

As soon as we got everything boiling pretty well we hit the timer for ten minutes. It was ten loooong minutes of me asking Mike if it has been ten minutes yet and if he was sure he set his watch right because it felt like ten minutes.

and stirring and stirring....

With stirring finished, we added in the pectin. The recipe said two packs but I was hesitant because I wanted it to be more sauce-y and not as much jell-y. We dumped in the first pack and then threw caution to the wind and dumped in the second one. We waiting the prescribed one minute and then began to fill our jars.

I got this handy dandy little utensil set at wal-mart. They have all kinds of canning stuff so when I left there I had many more ideas of things I wanted to try. I am getting brave y'all. Anyway, this little set was $7.00 and it was totally worth it. We didn't use the little spatula thing but all the other stuff was super helpful and I felt like a real professional canner.

This hot pepper jelly is spicy and sweet and really delicious on lots of stuff. You can spread it on a sandwich, on crackers with cream cheese, put a dollop on grilled fish or maybe even eat it straight out of the jar with a spoon. I think when we make it again we will do maybe one and a half packs of pectin. I think that would be the best texture.

Finished product!

 Ok, so that was my little foray in to canning. I have a few more ideas for things to try. I want to do pickles and I saw this recipe for pumpkin butter and we kind of need more jam. I will post some more adventures in canning as I experiment.