Pickled Red Cherry Peppers

One of my favourite times of the year us autumn. It’s mild, the evenings are cool and comfy, Canada’s crops are up for harvesting and one seems to savour each day as you know winter comes all to quick.

With autumn also comes preserving, canning, pickling, jarring, salting, curing, smoking, drying. All of these methods of preserving foods were a necessity to survive the winter. Today’s generation of kids does not know what life is/was like without a TV remote and all of us do not know what life is like without a fridge.

Preserving captures the essence of food. It’s trapped in time, suspended – on “lay away” until desired. Through the course of autumn, I’ll show you some of the ways our family preserves foods.

Today I’m showing you one of my favourites. Pickled red cherry peppers. They can be found hot and sweet and we pickle both. This pickled pepper was introduced to our family by my Aunt Aphrodite. To this date, she’s one of the best cooks I’ve known in our family.

This recipe is not difficult and the ingredients are simple. The flavour is in the pepper. Like any direction for pickling, ensure your jars are clean & sterile, use new jar seals each year and you won’t fail. Go get a bushel of Thea Dita’s red cherry peppers. Have it as a side with a Fasoulada (bean soup) or Fakkes (lentil soup) or as part of your spread of Greek winter mezedes.

Pickled Red Cherry Peppers

1 large pot
1 dozen medium-sized mason jars (with lids and seals)
1 bushel of sweet or hot red cherry peppers
5 cups of white wine vinegar
3/4 cup of pickling salt
15 cups of water
1 heaping Tbsp. of whole black peppercorns
1/4 cup of vegetable oil

1. Sterilize your mason jars. Click here for a easy to understand run-down.
2. Cut/trim the the stems of the peppers and rinse the peppers. Allow the water to drip dry in a large basin sink.
3. Into your large pot, add all the ingredients (except the peppers) and bring to a boil.
4. Add the peppers in batches. As soon as you see a rolling boil, start a 4 minutes count and then remove the peppers for jarring. Repeat with remaining batches until the peppers are all boiled. Contents of the jar should just reach the neck. Pickled jars need what’s called “head space”.
5. You may try and stuff as many peppers as you can into each jar. Pour pickling juice into each jar of peppers. When done, have a look at each jar to see if more pickling juice needs to be poured in. Sometimes the peppers absorb the juice. Each jar should should have submerged peppers in pickling juice.
6. Using paper towel, wipe the rim of the jar of any excess liquid. Place seals on all the jars and tighten the metal screw bands.
7. Within a 1/2 hour, press your finger on each lid to see if a seal has been created. If a seal has not been created, read this and review your process and try again with a new seal on the jar.