They are a bit milder and more sour compared to tomatoes. You can chop and make salsa which would have only green items in it for a nice green looking salsa. Not sure if you would like the flavor of tomatillo jam or jelly. They have less natrual pectin compared to regular tomatoes. Also, there are a few differnet flavors of them, and one has a faint taste of pineapple, where I suppose you could mix pinapple with it for a jam. If you have a Ball Blue Book, I think there are a couple of recipes including one for relish.

Tomatillo Salsa

5 1/2 cups chopped,cored, husked tomatillos
1 cup chopped onion
1 cup chopped green chili peppers
4 cloves minced garlic
2 T. minced cilantro
2 tsp. cumin
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp. red pepper
1 cup vinegar, 5 percent acidity
1/4 cup bottled lime juice

Combine all ingredients, bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer 10 minutes. Ladle the hot salsa into hot jars leaving 1/4-inch headspace. Process in water bath for 15 minutes.

It is not safe to reduce the amount of vinegar or increase the amount of vegetables. If too tart, add a pinch of sugar.

Are you making the roasted tomatillo-chipotle salsa? I am planning to make that tomorrow, and I made the tomato-chipotle version yesterday (it's a few pages earlier in the book).

In my tomato version, the pepper puree is overpowering, not so much in heat as in smoky, earthy flavor. When I make the tomatillo version I am planning to add the pepper puree a little at a time and keep tasting. Whatever quantity of puree I have left but don't add, I will replace it with an equal amount of vinegar added to the salsa to make sure it's not too thick.

Also, I went to a bodega for the dried peppers, and the ones labeled cascabels look more like the guajillos (which were also labeled and sold separately - I don't know what these "cascabels" really are). Using 12 guajillo-sized peppers instead of 12 little round cascabels would increase the total amount of peppers and be a safety issue. I had already cut the peppers in my batch from 12 to 8, but I will not use all the puree, since it would add extra pepper solids (I will replace with extra vinegar as I said above).

Melissa

Here is a link that might be useful: chiles