A peck of pickled peppers

Coffee now31 Oct 2021Open original ↗

It’s that time of year again; the time of year that any excess produce from the garden has to be preserved as chutneys, sauces, and, in a new attempt this year… pickles.

I do love a good kebab - one place I lived even had a fabulous kebab van complete with its own fresh tabbouleh. A staple of the takeaway kebab is also a pickled chilli; I wouldn’t dream of picking it out to throw away.

Chillis are easy to grow, they just need a sunny spot, and ours are actually all grown in plant pots against a south-facing wall. The trouble is you do tend to get a glut and, to make the most of the crop, you need to do some preserving. We often grow a variety suitable for drying (e.g. cayenne long joe or Pinocchio’s nose), but this year we’ve grown a fleshy variety called Hungarian hot wax, with the intention of pickling for a hit of kebab-style goodness.

These are pickled when yellow, rather than when they’ve fully ripened and got super hot. Ok, we don’t quite do a peck of them, think the volume of a shopping bag, but a few jars is easy.

All pickle recipes are basically similar; there’s vinegar, salt, sugar, spices and water. Here, we’ve adapted a recipe from Bread&salt, for a Turkish vibe, but pickled chillis are common in Asian cuisine too.

Pickle recipe

Ingredients

250 g Hungarian hot wax chillis (or two small plants worth)
~6 whole peeled garlic cloves
6 bay leaves
a handful of dried chickpeas (I haven’t seen this in most pickle recipes, but this particular blog said they help keep the pickle juice clear, so we chucked them in)
1 tablespoon table salt
1 teaspoon sugar
250 ml white wine vinegar
250 ml water
juice of 1 lemon and half lemon sliced

Method

Prepare some sterilised jars (we just stick them in the oven for a hour on a low heat in a tray with some water).
Wash the chillis and cut the stems off.
Put the salt, vinegar, water, sugar in a large pan and bring to the boil, then remove from the heat, and add the lemon juice to make the pickle juice.
Take the jars and add chickpeas, and a couple of bay leaves and garlic cloves to each jar, then add the chillis.
Pour your pickle juice over the chillis, making sure they are covered.
Add lemon slices to the top and seal jars.
Leave to pickle for about a month in a cool dark place, checking that they remain covered in liquid every now and again.

So, in fact it’s three weeks later (no waiting for a month to taste!), and I can confirm they’re great. I’m sure if you sliced the chillis, they’d be ready really quite quickly, some say next day.

Our chillis were rather variable in heat before pickling (some were ‘tested’ by stuffing with mozzarella and barbecuing), and although pickling usually diminishes heat levels, here it seems to have evened it out. They’ve also kept their yellow-green colour. They won’t keep as long as a chutney, but we should get a few more months from our jars.

Eat with kebab, or as part of a meze. Or throw them on a pizza, in a soup, with some fried rice, on a taco…. yum.

Extra shots

On a peck of pickled peppers
https://www.the-american-interest.com/2019/12/22/in-a-pickle-with-a-peck-of-pickled-peppers/
UK chilli seed supplier with information on growing
https://www.southdevonchillifarm.co.uk

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