I agree. I am pretty cautious with habaneros because just inhaling the aroma of one single habanero sliced in half with a knife....so one simple cut...makes me sneeze and cough for hours. No other peppers affect me that way, but none of the other peppers I grow are nearly as strong as habs. I also have to be careful during clean up as inhaling the pepper scent while rinsing out the food processor before putting it in the dishwasher sends me off on a coughing and sneezing fit again.

I wear nitrile medical gloves when processing all hot peppers because I don't want pepper juice on my hands at all since I feel the burn, even from jalapenos. I love to eat jalapenos though and they don't make me cough and sneeze.

For most peppers I wear single gloves, but for habaneros I wear double or triple gloves while cutting them. Is it awkward? Yes, but if you've ever once gotten habanero juice on your face, for example, you want to avoid ever doing that again. I also wear my onion goggles when processing habaneros because I don't want for any habanero juice to squirt into my eyes, and it also just helps keep the pepper fumes from affecting me as much. Do you have the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving? It is the 400+ page book with a yellow cover featuring rows of home-caned food across the cover. My copy is from the 2006 printing. I don't know if there is a more recent edition. It is full of recipes for salsas and sauces where you could sub in habanero for some or all of the other specified peppers, like their Sombrero Barbaque Sauce, which uses 2 jalapeno peppers, seeded and chopped. I don't know that I'd sub 2 habaneros for 2 jalapenos, but I might sub in enough habanero to equal 1/4 of the total amount of jalapenos called for in the recipe. The Peach Salsa recipe in this book calls for 4 jalapeno peppers, but I've made it with half jalapenos and half habaneros. It probably is not that different from the recipe you're looking at in the BBB.

In the years when I make Habanero Gold Jelly, I make at least 100 jars to give away as Christmas gifts, and sometimes 20 to 40 more than that. That's about all the habaneros I can stand to handle at at given time. Some years I've made it with dried peaches or dried apples instead of dried apricots, and some year's I've made Habanero Cherry Jelly or Turkey's Revenge, which is a Cranberry-Habanero Jelly. It adds a surprise twist to Thanksgiving Dinner.

One year I dehydrated habaneros and ground them into a powder. A little powder like that will last you 100 years. I also dehydrated some and chopped them in the food processor into flakes that were larger than powder. Again, a tiny amount of that lasts a long time and a lot of it will last the rest of your life.

It doesn't take very much habanero at all to create a salsa so hot that most people can't eat eat it, but Tim has a co-worker who is from the Caribbean and she likes hot stuff, so I can make Habanero Gold 2X or 3X, subbing more habaneros for the sweet peppers and I haven't made a super-hot version yet that is too hot for her and her son. It's been a while since I made one of the extra hot versions though.

I have frozen them some years. I usually chop them first as if making Habanero Gold, and then measure them into the small snack-sized zip-lock bags in the amount needed for each Big Batch of Habanero Gold. Then I put all the snack-sized zip-locks of chopped habs into a quart or gallon freezer ziplock depending on how many little snack-sized ziplocks there are. Or, if you want to freeze them slice in half or quartered so you can add some heat but not too much to soups, stews, etc., slice to the desired size, freeze on a cookie sheet (so they don't freeze into one big solid clump in a bag), and then put them in a ziplock bag to go into the freezer. That way it is easy to remove just one piece of habanero for use in cooking and then return the bag to the freezer. After all, you don't need a lot of habanero all at once.

I use gloves with jalapenos, too. Hmmm, I think I need more gloves. Only takes once of burning your hands. I haven't tasted it yet, but next year I will grow more Anaheims. That plant has as many peppers as leaves. I think my husband would enjoy more of them. I also think I will grow fewer bells and more like sweet banana or the little mini bells. I have better luck with them. I have to laugh at my husband, anything not working in the garden he now says, "must be the heat". I am waiting for him to complain about the ugly tomatoes, but if I pull off all the brown leaves, the fruit will sunburn. Despite chicken waterers, dog water, and a creek next door, today I found several tomatoes with holes pecked in them that were too high up for chickens or bunnies.

Must be the birds. Got bird netting?

I have a garden full of stuff to harvest but it is too hot to harvest it. I'm hoping to harvest peppers tonight. I haven't harvested any in 4 or 5 days now, so there should be quite a few.

I'm so jealous about the habs, mine is not making any. I have some in the freezer though and I planted a couple of bhuts in pots this year so I can bring them in and overwinter them. I absolutely love habs and tabs and on the bhuts, if you pick them just over half to 2/3's mature they are not as hot and they have the best flavor of any hot pepper that I have ever tasted! It is a good idea to wear protective eye wear when cutting peppers tho, one time I was cutting a hab and it squirted straight into my eye. Talk about your eyes slamming shut, tearing and yelling going on. I now wear glasses :)

Donna Dot, wearing some protective eye-wear is probably a good idea. I keep forgetting to order some safety glasses. I need them for weedeating anyway!

My safety glasses aren't fancy onion goggles from one of those kitchen supply places for pampered cooks. Mine are Stanley safety goggles bought right off the store shelt at one of the big box stores. Here's what you could buy if you wanted to spend more:

Onion Goggles

And here's the thrifty kind that I have, though this is a different brand:

Chemical Goggles

Dawn, I can't believe they make "onion" goggles. lol Too funny!

You just made me smile hahahhahaha

Dawn, we understand completely. If I did that many onions, I'd wear scuba gear if it would help. Believe it or not, I googled "onion goggles", and it brought up the most hilarious images.

DH has dozens (yes, really, he looses them, buys more, then finds them). Various kinds. He also has a resperator. So next time they laugh, threaten to get a respirator. Then you can get a pair of these so you can tune them out. DH has a pair he wears when he mows, or when he listens to talk radio, which I hate.

Dawn, that's a good idea. I'm STILL chopping onions for the freezer.

I should buy the respirator for my kids ha

Y'all can laugh, but I have some serious medical goggles, respirators and Tyvek medical suits (like HazMat teams wear), mostly stored in a kitchen cabinet but also stored in a spare room. They're all still in their original packaging. Want to know why?

Remember when Dallas had the patient with Ebola a couple of years ago? Well, our son and the other firefighters from his station plus an ambulance crew of paramedics there at DFW had taken care of a patient from an inbound flight from another country about 6 weeks before the Dallas Ebola case happened, and the patient they cared for presented with symptoms that could have been Ebola. Ultimately it was determined by the hospital personnel and CDC testing to not be Ebola. However, for 4 or 5 days while everyone waited for the test results from the CDC, those firefighter paramedics were antsy, fearing they might have had contact with a person who was sick with Ebola. They knew that if they had been exposed to Ebola, they and their family members could be at risk.

During that time, our son ordered all the medical stuff, and stocked up on canned goods like a Doomsday Prepper, fearing he might have brought Ebola to our home and that we'd have to self-isolate from the rest of the world if he came down with it. He tried to isolate himself from us as much as he could in case he'd been exposed, he ate off disposable dishes, etc., stayed mostly in his room, only used one specific bathroom that we didn't use, etc., doing everything he could to keep us safe, just in case. Of course, it wasn't Ebola, we still are eating up all the prepper-type stored food he bought, and I guess the goggles, respirators and Tyvek suits will just sit in that cabinet until we use them for something else. On the day that the word came down that the CDC test ruled out Ebola in that case, there were a bunch of relieved firefighters/paramedics. I had teased him for overreacting, but then when Dallas had their Ebola case and some of the medical personnel became infected with it as well, I gained a new appreciation for how hard he had tried to avoid contact with us just in case he'd been exposed to it as well.

One day last month when I was processing a 5-gallon bucket of onions he came into the room and saw me with my hardware store goggles and smelled the strong onion smell in the kitchen and reminded me that we had "better goggles and respirators if you need them". I told him I was perfectly fine and would save those medical supplies for something more serious than chopping onions. Who knows? Maybe I'll use them when I am chopping habaneros. They're just sitting there taking up space in my cabinet.

All my habanero types failed this year :(

But I still have resources. When I have an over abundance of really hot peppers (most years) I stuff as many as I can in a sauce pan, add a few glugs of vinegar and a handful of salt, steam them and then run them through our food processor. The thick "sauce" which comes out is then canned in jars and labeled "Magma." It's so hot that even a little trickle of the stuff on a fried egg tends to be too hot for comfort. But anytime I run out of hot sauce I simply take a pint of tomato sauce from the cupboard, add a bit of salt and one or two soup spoon's of magma. Presto! I have a pint of hot sauce! I really like this system.

George

George, that is what I initially wanted to do, but couldn't find an "approved" canning recipe! I actually wanted to make something with both habaneros and peaches that was saucy, and not salsa. The harvest forum has scared me away. I don't see why it can't be done, especially with straight vinegar, salt, and maybe some sugar....maybe even add a little bottled lime and citric acid, and water bath it for maybe 40-45 minutes?

I may do my own thing, after lots of research. I won't give it away, so if I poison anyone, it'll just be me. I have the most tolerance for heat, anyway. My kids wouldn't dare put that on their tongues;)

Do you mean something like a fermented pepper sauce? Lots of people make fermented pepper sauces, and fermentation doesn't scare me at all now that I understand the process better than I did when I first started using fermentation. The first few times I fermented batches of food, I always was sure I was going to kill someone. So far, nobody has died, so I don't worry about it so much any more.

I read Sandor Katz's huge book on fermentation last winter and made a lot more fermented foods this season than I ever have before.

Here's a recipe for a fermented pepper sauce.

Fermented Hot Pepper Sauce

Thanks, Dawn. I actually had something else in mind. There are several recipes out there similar to what I'm looking for. They aren't approved for canning, although some folks do can it up. I'd like to make a peach-habanero sauce. Something that would be thicker than a tabasco sauce, but smoother and thinner than salsa. As I mentioned earlier, if I did anything up that wasn't tested, I certainly wouldn't share it with anyone. I'd be my own guinea pig, so to speak. I think if I use some common sense, use comparable pH levels, and use a full vinegar/lime juice, salt, and a decent amount of sugar, I should be able to make it shelf stable. We have pickled peaches, and we have pickled peppers, pickled garlic, pickled onions, etc. If I didn't create a significant density issue, and I applied a high level of acid, and processed it for the longest time necessary for the ingredient requiring the longest processing, then it should be stable. When I make cowboy candy, I always can up the left over syrup, too. I love that stuff, because I use to put on grilled chicken, and I even use it as a dipping sauce/topping for other things. That's the consistency I'm looking for. I just want to use peaches and habaneros.

I think this is the recipe I used when we had they cayenne glut hot pepper sauce

I may do both: Make the BBB peach salsa, and my guinea pig sauce. I'm still analytically paralyzed. I put up 8 pints of bread and butter jalapenos this morning, though. I at least got that done. I've got 7 cucumbers to taste for bitterness, and if they are not bitter (yeah, right...lol) then I'll make dill pickles. I have been going through my dill pickles like crazy. I can eat a pint a day! At least they are low calorie...lol

Thanks, Amy. I submitted mine without seeing your post.

I didn't put up 8 pints...lol I put up 10 pints. See, I'm crazy.

We were typing at the same time. It really wasn't useful, since it is not the direction you were going. I am trying to get enough cukes to do fermented dills. I bought a fancy fermenting jar last year and I have not used it.

I think I might have found my solution. There are some sauces in the BBB, specifically a Hot Rhubarb Grilling Sauce and a Plum Sauce that appear to be adaptable. I"d add some bottled lemon juice as a precaution.

Amy, you gotta use that new fermenting jar! lol I'm so afraid I'd drop the whole mess, or trip over a cat, trying to move it when it was full.

This is what I have, it is not so big. I used a gallon mayo jar the first time I think. Fermenting jar.

My kids and grandkids go to the lake a couple of times a year. Because they are such a large family, they cook in batches and take food so all the time isn't spent in the kitchen. Here is a side-by-side of my oldest granddaughter, taken 3 years apart. She's chopping onions. They make her nose run.

Amy, I like that set up. That might be something I try next year!

Nowyousedum, that is just precious! Such cute girls.

Mary, I'm glad you found a recipe you think will work for you. I have tons of canning books and usually can find what I need if I just look long enough, but often am too busy in the summer to sit still and look long enough to find the recipe that is just right.

I am going to pick peppers this morning and make candied jalapenos. At least our weather is supposed to be half-decent today so it will be a decent day to be canning. Lately I've been trying to avoid canning on hot days, but today is not supposed to be as hot as most. We're starting out with humidity of 99% this morning, so it likely won't feel as nice outdoors as I was hoping, but I'll just pick the peppers as quickly as possible.

Amy, I have seen those perfect pickler type jars and always think about ordering one, but don't think I'd use one because they are relatively small compared to the average sized fermentation batch in all my recipes.

I just ferment in food-safe plastic buckets. My last batch of sauerkraut was fermented in a 5-gallon pickle bucket from Firehouse Subs and all my fermented pickle batches this year (I think I ended up with 6 or 7 batches....I lost track after a while) were done in either 3-gallon or 4-gallon food-safe plastic buckets.

I've never yet had any issue with mold or anything else while fermenting so haven't felt like I need to get too fancy with how I do it. I'm just happy with a plastic food-safe bucket, a plate to hold the food beneath the brine, and a weight to hold down the plate.

The hardest thing is just keeping the room temperature in the right range---it is best at 75 or cooler, but you'll still get a good ferment as long as you keep the room temperature under 80 degrees.

On my last fermented pickle project, I was fermenting cinnamon pickles at the end of my cucumber season in early to mid-July and it was hard to keep our west-facing kitchen under 80 degrees on a day when I was canning.

nowyousedum, She is so adorable, and also obviously a great help in the kitchen. Thanks for sharing the photos.

Dawn

Dawn, I'm going to get a couple more canning books this winter. If I were to only pick 3, can you recommend your favorite 3 books?

Dawn, I really love those candied jalapenos. I opened the last jar yesterday of what I had canned. Now I have to do some more;) I am a little disappointed in my 10 jars of bread and butter jalapenos that I made yesterday. They are floating. I cold packed them, and stuffed them as firmly as I could down into the jars, but there is a good inch and a half space at the bottom. Last time I hot packed them, so they wouldn't float, but it made them a little more mushy and dense than I like. Is there a goldilocks zone somewhere? lol

The "magma" I make has never gone bad on me. But the liquid I add while making it is vinegar. I also add salt. I can it about like I would tomatoes. Once I open a jar, I keep it in the fridge.

Macmex, can you kinda give me an idea of your proportions of peppers to vinegar? You can rough it, but I'm trying to picture the density. Also, do you just make it good and salty with canning/pickling salt? When you say you can it like you would tomatoes, do you mean about 35-45 minutes?

I have so many favorite canning books, it is hard to decide, but here's three I use a lot, in addition to the (of course) current Ball Blue Book and the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving (2006).

For marvelous unique jams, marmalades, preserves and jellies, you cannot go wrong with Madelaine Bullwinkel's "Gourmet Preserves" Chez Madelaine (her cooking school) style. Among some of the unique recipes in this book are these: Ratatouille Marmalade, Rosemary Red Onion Jelly, No-Sugar Orange-Fig Jam, Nectarine-Plum Jam with Ginger, Blueberry-Rhubarb Jam, Quince Jam, and Apple and Onion Marmalade. Most, though not all, of her recipes involve using only natural pectin. Some of her "Quick" recipes use purchased pectin. As a bonus, she has a lot of recipes at the end of the book for foods made to go with your canned foods, including various kinds of scones, all kinds of muffins, popovers, pancakes, french toast, a jelly roll sponge cake to fill with the jam, jelly or preserves of your choice, tortes, cheesecakes, bread pudding and at least one recipe each for a trifle and a fool (it is Rhubarb Ginger Fool).

One of my favorites for making small batches of random stuff is "The Complete Book of Small-Batch Preserving" by Ellie Top and Margaret Howard. I have the 2nd edition from 2007. This book includes info on jams, jellies, low-sugar spreads, salsas, mustards, marinades, pickles, relishes, chutney's, conserves, curds, butters, dessert sauces, syrups and liqueurs, and flavored oils, specialty salad dressings and some specialty vinegars. They also have a few recipes at the back of the book to help you use the items you've preserved including Jalapeno Quesedillas (using their Pickled Jalapenos), Provence-Style Grilled Vegetables (using their Provence-Style Vinegar) and Camelized Red Onion Pizza (using their Carmelized Red Onion Relish). This book is close to 400 pages and has an astonishing variety of recipes for small-batch preserving, and even has a small section on freezer products, including freezer jams, freezer jellis, freezer salsa, freezer bread-and-butter pickles and freezer tapenades. If there's a recipe you are looking for, it is likely to be in this book and the fact that the batches are small (many make 3 jars) means you can experiment with many different recipes over the course of the season.

Another one is Linda Ziedrich's "The Joy of Jams, Jellies and other Sweet Preserves" from 2009. This one has about 200 recipes for fruits and a few veggies and nuts, including some for less common fruit like medlar, quince, white currants, roses (like rose hip jelly), tomatillo, shrub, and some more common things that are hard to can safely---for these she has recipes that can be frozen, like Pumpkin Butter and Cabello Angel (Spaghetti Squash preserves). I also have her pickling book as well.

Hope this gives you some new ideas.

Dawn

When I make magma I use a sauce pan and put about an inch of vinegar on the bottom. Then I chop up peppers and fill to the top of the pot. I add something like a handful of salt for per quart capacity of the pot. All this, I heat until it is boiling/steaming. I then let it cool (important for safety's sake) and then run it through our food processor, which is a 30 year old Vitamix. The product is what I call magma. It's HOT. It is also especially interesting if someone makes a shake in the Vitamix before it has been scrubbed clean several times, over the period of a couple days!

Dawn, I'm saving this to my desktop before I lose it. Thank you. Macmex, I'm trying it. lol. Would putting the mixer container in bleach water help me??? I pretty much only use my year old blender for the grandkids and their smoothies! I don't know if they would trust old grandma if I gave them an habanero shake!

My blender isn't a year old. My blender is like 30 plus years old! So, that should have been "years".

I wonder if soaking the blender in an oil/water mix would help. It usually is the pepper oils that cling to a blender or other equipment and then impart a peppery flavor to the next thing made in that equipment that is the problem. Same thing with your skin---it is the natural pepper oils that cling to your skin and can cause problems if you touch your eye, for example.

I don't know what to suggest. I simply wash ours out real real well and make myself a shake or two before anyone else gets into it. Also, I'll run tomatoes through it, for tomato sauce. That seems to wear the residual out/