Month: December 2022

Pickling this years Chilli crop

Today I made some pickled Chillies with a variety of Chillies that I harvested as part of this year’s Chilli crop. It is a good way of preserving Chillies and was  extremely easy to do. Having done this, besides pickling Chillies it now means that out of this years harvest I have been able to make Chilli powder, fermented Chillies and will shortly making hot sauce. I have also frozen quite a few.

All that I needed  for the pickling was the Chillies, some vinegar, water, sugar, salt, spices and the mason jars that I used to do the pickling.  I also needed a pot , a  cutting board and a sharp knife.

Once I had all of these together , the first step in the pickling process  was to sterilise the jars. I did this by washing them in warm soapy water and then rinsing them in fresh warm water, I then let them air dry.

Once this had been done, I placed them in an oven that I had preheated to 100 hundred degrees Celsius for ten minutes. This will have killed off any harmful bacteria. In addition to this, the use of vinegar in the  pickling process  helps to keep the Chillies free  from  air borne bacteria like Botulism. The acidity in vinegar deters the growth of Botulism spores which otherwise might have been a problem; as Chillies are not acidic in themselves

The next step was to remove the stalks from the three hundred grams of  mixed Chillies I was using  I then sliced them in half and packed them tightly into two mason jars. One jar is 500 millilitres and the other 350. In both instances the jars were filled to eighty percent of their total volume. I did this because it is essential that the Chillies are completely submerged in vinegar to prevent spoilage The only thing that was then needed was to make the pickling solution

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Fermented Chilli sauce

Last weekend I started making fermented Chilli sauce with part of my harvest of Aji Habaneros and Bishops Crowns. The Chillies are now starting to ferment, and I am now starting to see carbon – dioxide bubbles floating up from the fermentation brine. It has taken about three days to reach this point. In another four to five days the sauces will be ready, and I will then blitz them into a Chilli sauce.

Fermentation is a great way to preserve Chillies, whether making a hot sauce or Chilli pickles. It is a method that has been used for thousands of years and was certainly being done before canning and bottling was invented.Recently, there has been renewed interest in this ancient form of preservation. This is because people have realised that the end- product tastes great and is also really healthy. What’s more, it’s easy to do

The basic principle behind fermentation is that you allow the Chillies to ferment in a brine solution of about five percent salt in water. The fermentation process results in acetic acid being produced which serves to preserve the Chillies but also give them a pleasant sour taste. Once they have been preserved in this way, they can be kept either whole in the brine or alternatively the brine gets drained and the Chillies then get blended into a sauce.

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