My Prepper's Pickled Peppers

At the height of canning season, our small backyard garden is producing quite a good amount of Italian peppers (not very hot), and apparently, our neighbor's garden is doing the same because he dropped off a good-sized bag of them to us yesterday.

I now find myself in a prepper-pepper dilemma. I've already chopped up and frozen a few ziplock bags of Banana Peppers to put in the freezer, and I've already added them to any dish that I possibly can for daily lunches and dinners, and now I've got to find something else to do with them. So? It's time to make some Prepper's Pickled Peppers!

First plan of action? Hit up the Ball canning book and YouTube (of coarse!). While I've canned a fair amount of food, I still feel like a newbie, and so I always look for tried and true recipes that I know will be safe.....and yummy. Remember, you don't have to reinvent the wheel! There are many resources out there for you to use, and most of them are free! I read through a few different recipes, but I decided to go ahead and use a simple brine recipe that I got from imstillworkin on YouTube (she's one of my favorites, go check her out!). Here's the recipe:

4 cups of water

4 cups of vinegar

4 tsp. of pickling salt

I then got to work with the veggies. I'd already had my peppers in the sink soaking in cold water and a splash of vinegar to get the dirt off. (Isn't that just the best sight ever? Knowing that all of that was from my own garden- well with the help of some of my neighbor's peppers) just warms my prepper heart. 

After the peppers were nice and clean, I took them out of the water, cut a slit down the center, scraped out the ribs (the white stringy stuff) and the seeds, and then cut them into nice little rounds.

I put them into quart-size Mason jars, just so I would have a better idea of how much I was working with. (I'm working on getting a kitchen scale to make these kinds of posts more accurate.) I ended up with 2 1/2 quarts of chopped peppers all ready to pickle!

Now it was time to get to business! The first rule of canning, at least in my humble opinion, is to start with a clean, organized work space. For me, that means clearing off my counters of anything unnecessary, making sure my sink is clean, and having all of my canning equipment clean and waiting for me.

My water bath canner, with jars inside, simmering on the stove and the vinegar solution coming up to a boil.

Lids and rings all washed and placed into a pot to hang out in some simmering water.

Funnel, jar lifter, lid lifter, and air-remover tool all ready to go along with a ladle and a bowl to help keep things neat.

Trust me when I say that spending a little extra time to organize everything and walk through the process saves you a ton of frustration during the process. Now.....let the prepper pickled pepper party begin!

1. Take a jar from the water bath canner, empty it of the simmering/boiling water, and fill your jar with peppers- leaving 1/2 inch headspace (the space between the top of the jar and the food).  Make sure to poke your peppers- lol that sounds funny- to really pack them in. 

2. Next, ladle in the vinegar solution-again making sure to leave 1/2 inch headspace.

3. This step is very important! Make sure to use your air-removal took (or a wooden skewer or chopstick) to poke around in the jar and release the air bubbles. Making sure to add a little more liquid if needed to reach the 1/2 inch headspace requirement.

4. This step is also very important! Make sure to wipe the rim of your jar with a clean, damp paper towel. This will ensure that nothing gets between your jar lid and the rim of the mason jar, which would ruin the seal.

5. Place a jar lid and a band on the mason jar and tighten to "finger tight" which just means not too tight- just enough that you can comfortably open in with your fingers.

6. Using your jar lifter, put the mason jar into the rack of your canner where it will keep nice and warm and snuggly while you fill the rest of the jars :)

Once you have finished, lower the canning rack into the canner and put the cover on. I set my stove to med-high heat and waited for the water to come to a rolling boil. Once it reached the rolling boil stage, I set my timer for 15 minutes and started to clean up the kitchen!

After 15 minutes, I took the jars out of the canner and put them on a dishtowel on my counter, leaving a fair amount of space between the jars, where they can sit and cool and seal. I counted and heard all 5 of the jars ping- telling me that they had sealed. Another successful foray into the canning world!

Final Thoughts:

Easy? Check!

Frugal? Check!- Free veggies from the garden and a few dollars in vinegar, salt, and a mason jar.

Worth While? Definitely! I can't wait to give these a try on hamburgers, hotdogs, and sandwiches!

I hope you're all giving canning a try! Let me know if you have any questions, comments, criticism (constructive), concerns, etc. I'd love to hear from you!

Happy Prepping-

 The Prepared Mom