I love spicy food. I also love food preservation. This week I was granted several pounds of serrano peppers, and after attempting repeatedly to foist them on strangers on the street, I decided to pickle some slices for future cooking use at Food Not Bombs.
I make hot sauce pretty regularly. This is great, except for the fact that my housemate and I have friends who also love to make and give away hot sauce, and we also have the good fortune to stumble upon giant grocery bags of condiments in other people-s trash with some frequency. It-s gotten to the point where there are easily over a dozen different kinds of hot sauce in our teeny, junior-sized refrigerator (and don-t even get me started on mustard and barbecue sauce!). Even the most hardcore hot sauce lover would have a rough time getting through all of it (considering most of it is on the painfully hot end).
When I have an excess of peppers that can-t be dried (cascabel and ancho chiles do well this way) or frozen, I like to pickle them. This way, you can use them in regular cooking just as you would fresh peppers. Plus, you get some spicy infused vinegar out of the deal, that you can throw in in place of white vinegar. Jalapeños are my favorite pepper to use in this way, as I use them frequently (with lime and cilantro . . . one of the best flavor combinations ever!) in stews and in beans and on sandwiches. If you wanted to, you could even make hot sauce out of them later on down the line.
Feeling inspired to grow some hot peppers yet?
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