Jalapeno Pepper Jelly

We love jalapeño chili peppers. We use them in so much of our cooking that I’ve taken to even pickling my own.

For the last year I’ve been searching for a recipe for jalapeño jelly that didn’t rely on food dye or commercial pectin, but to no avail. So, with some experimentation, I’ve come up with the following recipe which uses apple jelly made from Granny Smith apples (the tart, green apples) as a base, and cranberries for color.

Granny Smith apples (and cranberries too) have plenty of natural pectin, so no additional pectin is needed to make the jelly gel.

Jalapeno Pepper Jelly Recipe

Tart green apples have more pectin in them than sweet apples, so use tart green apples for this recipe, earlier in the season the better. This is especially true if you are not also using cranberries, as cranberries have their own natural pectin as well.

Jalapeño jelly can be pretty "hot" if you have included a lot of the seeds in your cooking. The jelly is great served on crackers with cream cheese because the fat molecules in the cream cheese absorb the hot capsaicin of the jalapeños, reducing the heat, but leaving the flavor of the chiles. This is also why sour cream tastes so good with spicy Mexican food.

Ingredients

• 4 lbs of tart apples (e.g. Granny Smith), unpeeled, chopped into big pieces, including the cores
• 6 jalapeño chili peppers, sliced in half lengthwise, the seeds and ribs removed from 3 of them (for mildly hot jelly. If you want a hotter jelly leave the seeds and ribs in all of them.)
• 1 green bell pepper (or red if you want the color), seeds and ribs removed, chopped
• 1 cup cranberries (optional but recommended, will help with color and with setting)
• 3 cups water
• 3 cups white vinegar
• 3 1/2 cups sugar (7/8 cup for each cup of juice)

Equipment Needed

• One 6-quart pan (Stainless steel or copper with stainless steel)
• A candy thermometer
• A large fine mesh sieve (or several layers of cheesecloth, or a muslin cloth jelly bag)
• 4-5 half-pint canning jars

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