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Wednesday, October 19, 2016

How many pickled peppers could Peter Piper pick?

I spent most of the morning and early afternoon yesterday tackling these:


And when all was said and done, I had these:


9 quart jars of pickled peppers and 4 pint jars of cowboy candy.

Last year I tried to make pepper jelly with zero success.  I made two different batches.  The first batch was very runny and never got jellified.  Pretty sure that's not a word but you know what I mean.  So on the second batch I added a ton of pectin and it went way past jelly and would have made a good mortar.

I've been seeing several people online talk about cowboy candy and thought I would give it a shot.  It's basically pickled peppers with a ton of sugar in them but no pectin so it's not as thick as a jelly. You are supposed to use it as a relish, as a sandwich spread,over meat, over cream cheese, etc. and I love anything spicy and sweet so I thought I would try it out.

However, the recipe I was following didn't call for very much sugar and it didn't look like it was going to thicken up so I panicked, went online and read her blog post again and it said she had modified other cowboy candy recipes.  But my liquid still didn't look as thick as hers so I went back and cooked up more sugar based on the other recipes I found online and added that back in.  Not sure if I've totally messed them up or not but I guess I will find out in 3 weeks.  Apparently you are supposed to let the cowboy candy sit for that long before you open it in order for the flavors to meld.

In the meantime, we've got more peppers on the vines so if they grow enough before a frost (although it's been in the 80s so a frost seems impossible anytime soon!) I will make another batch using a different recipe.

I still have a ton of tomatoes in the freezer that I need to salsify (also  not a word) but that will be for another day.  I can only do so much old-fashioned domestic work at a time!


1 comment:

Madeline said...

Well definitely write down what you did to the cowboy candy in case it's really good and you want to do it the same way next time! Because Murphey's Law... I totally think salsify is a word in this context. We've only had one night of potential frost so I am SURE you are a ways off!