Chile Harvest

So for weeks I have been attempting to harvest the chilies. I had a plant of fully red cayenne, and some ripe Bulgarian Carrot as well. I didn't have much hope for the jalapenos to turn red, and surprisingly the last of the corno di toro weren't going to ripen either. But it is mid October, and I should be lucky I am getting a harvest at all, with the minimal time I've put into the garden this year.

In previous years I wind up making lots of salsa at the end of the season with my remaining tomatoes. Last year I pickled two pints of jalapenos at the end of the season, and dried the cayenne. This year I went for pepper jelly. I searched the Internet for recipes and found they used a lot of sugar. (What's with that?) I haven't cared to do the research for the science behind lots of sugar in canning. Perhaps there is none? Anyway I had to search to find a low sugar recipe and found one decent one on the Ball website.Most of the recipes on the Internet are weak, and call for a bulk to be bell peppers. I wanted to use only hotter chilies and modified the recipe accordingly. Also, my harvest did not yield as much as expected, and I had to half the recipe. (Actually a little less than half.)

I split and seeded the fruit by hand, but used the food processor for the mincing. Rubber gloves are nice for handling that many chilies as well. I started with about a dozen each of cayenne and jalapeno, and about a half dozen each of  Bulgarian Carrot and Corno di Toro. The Corno di Toro making up about one cup of minced, while the others combined to make another cup of minced fruit. I shorted the vinegar and sugar a bit from the half recipe on the website, and also just used a heaping tablespoon of the low sugar pectin. From what I could taste off the spatula before canning, it was delicious. I probably won't last a week before I pop one jar open. And for reference, I was able to mostly fill four half pint jars with the result.