Pickled Jalapeños

photo: Eric Diesel

Writing about Mexican cooking in the previous column afforded me the opportunity to wax poetic about May sunshine and the flowers it brings. But fresh produce is also starting to appear. Leafy greens tumble into the salad bowl for vibrant Greek salads, classic California Cobbs, steakhouse wedges. Prickly artichokes appear for serving steamed as a lunchtime appetizer or pureed as a halftime dip. Assertive, versatile broccoli is pressed into every service from primavera to slaw. Tender green stalks of asparagus are sautéed for tossing with leeks and pasta, or steamed with delicate spring peas for ragoût.

We think of canning as a summer activity, and while the peak season for many vegetables and most fruit is still weeks away, it is not too early to capture some of spring’s bounty by memorializing it in jars. A walk through the farmer’s market will inspire you. You can make a bright and flavorful giardiniera with the early spring vegetables, or a batch of jam from the first berries or stone fruit. I often make red-hots during the spring, provided the growth of the new bushels of apples doesn’t seem forced and that I can find the inexplicably elusive cinnamon disks that are essential to this Pennsylvania Dutch preparation.

Thanks to the appropriately named hot house, fresh chiles are available year long. Few foods inspire the devotion that chile peppers do – the only one I can think of as I write this is chocolate. There is an almost endless variety of the fruit of the genus Capiscum, and they are all members of the nightshade family. While peppers are used for both culinary and medicinal purposes in almost every culture, chile peppers are native to the Americas, where they have been cultivated for at least six thousand years. After European contact, peppers spread to Europe and Asia, where they have long since become as staple in everything from antipasto to stir fry as they are in salsa.

That heat that chile peppers are famous for -- and that, perhaps paradoxically, inspires the pepper’s singular devotion -- is measured on the Scoville scale, which measures in SHU’s (Scoville heat units) the amount of extract from a specific chile that must be diluted before its heat becomes undetectable. SHU’s range from a benign 0 for the humble bell pepper to almost 1-1/2 million for the searing Trinidad Scorpion. But no matter how bad your mouth hurts, don’t claim to know for certain which is the world’s hottest pepper – to chileheads, who get het up over this distinction, them’s fightin’ words.

The cultivar of Capsicum annuum that you and I know as the jalapeño clocks in at between 2,500 and 8,000 SHU’s, putting it somewhere between the Anaheim and the Serrano on the scale and between low and moderate in the degree of its heat. (There is often a wide range in SHU’s, both because there are distinctions between specific examples of single cultivars, and because SHU’s are notoriously difficult to quantify). I always keep a few cans of New Mexico hatches (500 – 2,000 SHU’s) in the cupboard for satisfying my Western lad’s need for green chile cheeseburgers. I also like to put up jalapeños, which I do a few times a year to take advantage of the ongoing variety and freshness of the peppers. It is easy and satisfying to do by the small-batch method below, which results in a nicely flavored jalapeño with a sweet-sour top note over mellow heat. It’s nice to always have a jar on hand for scattering across a tower of nachos, marching along a tube steak, tucking into a quesadilla, or sautéing for chicken soup.

PICKLED JALAPEÑOS

It is essential to follow safe canning practices. For instructions on safe canning, click here: http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/publications/publications_usda.html , or here: http://www.freshpreserving.com/getting-started.aspx. This recipe makes between four and five half-pint jars, and can also be used to preserve fresh banana peppers.

2 pounds fresh jalapeño peppers
2-1/2 cups white vinegar
1/4 cup cold water
4 teaspoons table salt
1 teaspoon granulated sugar

1. Prepare canner, jars and lids.
2. Fill a bowl large enough to hold the jalapeños halfway with water. Add several drops of commercial vegetable cleaner. Swirl to combine.
3. Put on a clean pair of food-safe rubber or latex gloves. Plunge the peppers into the cleaning mixture; swirl them around in the mixture.
4. Put an in-sink colander in place. Empty the cleaned peppers into the colander and rinse with cool water. The peppers should feel clean, with no residual food wax or other agents.
5. Place a large saucepan on the stovetop. Add the vinegar and water to the pan. Add the sugar and salt to the vinegar; stir with a wire whisk until the sugar and salt are dissolved. Cover the pan, and turn the heat to medium.
6. Working one at a time, place each pepper on a clean cutting board. Cut away and discard the top and bottom of each pepper. Cut each pepper into 1/4 inch rings, retaining the seeds and pith. Scrape the pepper rings into a large bowl as you go.
7. Place a clean tea towel on a counter near the canner. Use canning tongs to remove hot jars from water bath. Do your best not to touch the hot jars; let the tongs do the work. Place hot jars mouth up on the clean towel.
8. Use a clean spoon to pack each jar tightly with pepper rings.
9. Use a clean ladle to fill each jar with hot brine to the 1/4-inch mark. Remove air bubbles and adjust headspace if necessary (see instructions) with hot brine.
10. Use a clean, damp sponge to wipe the rim of each jar. Center a clean, hot lid (see instructions) on each jar. Screw a band down on each jar until it meets resistance; increase just until tight.
11. Use canning tongs to return the jars to the boiling water bath. Add more water if necessary to ensure that the jars are completely covered by boiling water by 1 inch. Process in boiling water bath for 10 minutes.
12. After jars have processed for ten minutes in the boiling water bath, turn off the heat. Remove the canner lid and set aside. Let jars sit in hot water ten minutes.
13. After ten minutes, use the canning tongs to remove the jars. Being very careful of the hot jars, lids and liquid, place jars upright on the towel. Allow to sit 24 hours.
14. After 24 hours, check for a vacuum seal (see instructions). Label each jar with the contents and the date prepared. Safely prepared, stored and sealed, the pickled jalapeños will keep for one year from date of preparation.