I use the recipe that comes in the pectin box. I use Jalapeno's & Cayenne peppers alone no Bells.

I've made several kinds and I just use what I get from the garden. Of course, be careful mixing red and green, they bleed yucky brown. I normally use the pepper jelly recipe in the Ball Book for Jalapeno, substitute equivalent for the bells and I use red jalapenos.

Dawn and Lisa have both made yummy Hab Jelly!!! The recipe is around here somewhere. Carsonsmimi made a blackberry hab jelly, This is the time of year we pull up those old threads!

habanero-gold-recipe thread 2006

I always use the Habanero Gold Big Batch Recipe, which is called Sweet 'N Hot Confetti (or possibly Hot 'N Sweet, whichever.....) Jelly in the thread Paula linked above. The original Habanero Gold recipe (also in the thread Paula linked) only makes three half-pints whereas the Sweet 'N Hot Confetti Jelly makes 6 half-pints using the same amount of liquid pectin. I've also made it with all kinds of fruit substitutions including dried peaches, dried apples or dried cherries substituted for the dried apricots. I've also made the version of it that involves cranberries and is commonly referred to as Turkey's Revenge. The Turkey's Revenge jelly is a variation of the Hab Gold developed by Ottawapepper years and years ago. Here's a thread with the recipe for it:

Turkey's Revenge Jelly Recipe (Cranberry-Habanero Jelly)

For jalepeno jelly, I make it in two versions---a red one using only red jalapenos and a green one using only green jalapenos. You do not want to mix together the two colors of jalapenos in one batch of jelly or you end up with an unappetizing brown jelly. I just use the Jalapeno Jelly Recipes from the Ball Blue Book or any other Ball book like their Complete Book of Canning. The recipes I use do include sweet bell peppers, but if you want a recipe that excludes the sweet peppers, there's this one from the Ball website:

Jalapeno Jelly

Hope this helps. I'm chopping up Habaneros for Habanero Gold tomorrow, right after I finish canning all the jalapenos.

Dawn

Thank you all. I will get busy tomorrow for sure. Since I have a ton of peppers I figured I could make this to sell at a monthly market I am doing. We will see.

I have made the Haberno Gold (confetti) Jelly for Christmas gifts for my sister to give friends. Everyone loves it. They are really pretty in the squatty round jar or the quilted pints. I have pictures on FB. If you are on there, I can share them.

Oh, finally found where the pics were stashed on my laptop.

But I have an entire photo recipe essay saved if you want it.

Those are gorgeous. Yes I am on fb

Kim Reiss

I consider Habanero Gold the cadillac of pepper jellies because it looks so beautiful with the tiny confetti-sized pieces of peppers and onions suspended in the golden jelly. It is more time-consuming to make because of the time involved in dicing up the ingredients to the proper size, but the time spent on it is worth it because it is so beautiful, not to mention tasty.

Kim, I came back to add that the sweet bell peppers are used as part of the pepper quantity in most recipes in order to keep the pepper jelly mild enough for the average person to eat. Not everyone would want to eat a pepper jelly made only of jalapenos (or serranos or habaneros or whatever) because of how high the heat level might be, depending all hot hot the peppers are. They use the sweet peppers to achieve the proper volume and yet keep the jelly from being too hot, but you can use all peppers interchangeably in pepper jelly recipes, so you could substitute any pepper for the bells. Many recipes use various kinds of fruit as the main base with just some hot peppers for the heat. Both the fruit and the sugar help tame the heat (especially with habaneros) so that the jelly can be eaten. One of Tim's coworkers from a few years back grew up in the Caribbean and loved hot, hot, hot jelly. Even the regular Habanero-Gold was not necessarily hot enough for her, so I made one batch with double habaneros (substituting habaneros for a like amount of the red sweet pepper) so it would be closer to the kind of pepper heat she was used to. You have safe flexabilty within any pepper jelly recipe as long as the total amount of peppers used doesn't exceed the amount of peppers in the original recipe. Many people substitute more hot peppers for some or all of the sweet peppers.

I also have made Jalapeno Gold for people who love the flavor of Habanero Gold but cannot handle the heat of the habaneros.

Most jelly peppers have the same basic ingredients: peppers, sugar, vinegar and pectin. Most require liquid (not powdered) pectin in order to set up property. Some add food coloring in order to get a jelly that has better color. You control both the look and flavor of the jelly simply by choosing which peppers to use and which colors to use. Vinegar cannot be omitted because it is used to achieve the proper acidity. I know people who just use whatever peppers they have on any given day, often a combination of hot peppers of many kinds and some sweet peppers. If you use that approach, be sure to write down the name of each type of pepper used and how much of it is used so you can repeat that combination again if you come up with a combination of peppers that is especially tasty.

I noticed last night that the Habanero Gold big batch recipe developed by ReadingLady (Carol) over on the Harvest Forum years ago appears as a recipe labeled Habanero-Apricot Jelly in the new Ball canning book entitled "The All New Ball Book of Canning and Preserving". Of course, they don't give her credit for coming up with the big batch recipe, which is her adaptation of the original Benardin recipe that originated in Canada at least a couple of decades back. I knew there was an Apricot-Habanero recipe in this book but hadn't looked at it until last night to see how it compared with the recipe we all use here....and discovered it is the recipe we all use here!

I also wanted to add that when you have too many peppers to use right away, you can go ahead and do the prep work to use them in jelly and then freeze them. I do this all the time with habaneros. I cut them up and bag them in those tiny snack-sized Zip-lock bags in the quantity needed for each big batch of Habanero Gold. Then I label each bag with the name of the pepper, the date and the quantity in the bag, and I put all those tiny snack-sized bags in a gallon or quart sized freezer zip-lock bag and toss them in the deep freeze. When you are ready to make the jelly, just thaw the peppers and use them. There are time I harvest enough habaneros in one day to make 20 batches of Habanero Gold but don't have time to make that many batches in one day (or even one week) so freezing them until I have time to make the jelly works for me.

There are lots of cute half-pint and smaller jelly jars nowadays so you can make all kinds of beautiful jellies in equally beautiful jars. The short, squatty jars that Lisa showed are so pretty, but I usually save those for family only. For everyone else I just use either the plain half-pints or the quilted half-pints.

Thank you'll so much in is I had a computer again to print all these tips out so I could read and reread.

First I have to dry my apricots. I will do that today and work on habanero on Sunday.

Right now I am doing applesauce. I didn't get any done last year and I thought there was going to be a violent protest from my little man and my son lol. Once I get this first batch under my belt I will feel better. It will be my first canning in this camper :0

Kim, I sent you the album. Look in your "other" folder in the private messaging.

Thank you Lisa. That is awesome. I am going to make 2 batches 1 double hot 1 regular.

I checked, my habaneros will be ready tomorrow. No red peppers tho.

The red peppers just make it pretty. You can see in my pics that I used more yellow than red, because that is what we had.

There are times I've used green, gold or orange sweet peppers in Habanero Gold because that's all I had ripe in the garden and I wasn't going to go to the store to buy red ones just to have the prettier version of the jelly. The gold and orange bell peppers just blend in with the apricots and don't show up very well, but who cares? People still love the flavor just as much.

Thanks thanks for the links! My peppers are producing like crazy!

You're welcome.

Here's more:

This is a pickling recipe that can be used to can any kind of pepper, hot or sweet, using the Boiling Water Bath procedure.

Pickling Peppers

Here's a recipe to can peppers in water, but for safety reasons, you do have to use a pressure canner:

Pressure Canning Peppers in Water

Here's the NCHFP recipe for canning Marinated Peppers using a boiling water bath canner:

How To BWB Marinated Peppers

There are other NCHFP recipes for pickling various kinds of peppers so rather than list more, I'll link the index of the pickling recipes right here:

NCHFP Recipes For Pickled Vegetables

If you want to make cayenne (or any other hot pepper) sauce, here's the NCHFP recipe for doing so:

How To Can Cayenne Pepper Sauce

If anyone wants to freeze or dehydrate peppers and has questions about doing that, just ask.

Dawn

Wow thanks Dawn. I got the applesauce done, yay and it is challenging in the camper. But I feel better knowing how to adapt to doing it. I have a strong vent hood so I should be OK with the peppers.

You're welcome Kim. I'm glad to hear you are able to can in the camper. You know, if you ever have trouble with that, some folks can outdoors on either a Coleman-type camping stove or using a turkey fryer. I think that canning outdoors might work well if it wasn't windy, but people doing it in windy areas have to build wind shields to ensure the wind doesn't disrupt the canning process.