[SIZE=10.5pt]Previous to finding this awesome forum, the hottest pepper I was able to get my hands on was a Red Habanero. I've been growing various plants including peppers for awhile but never grew anything hotter than that. I recently found a Bhut Jolokia at a nursery and brought it home. However I am impatient and decided to take advantage of some of the awesome deals over in the Marketplace. I got a little excited and carried away and ended up ordering WAY TO MANY peppers than I know what to do with. So I will be making jams, jellies, hot sauces, powders, bbq sauce, pickling them, and who knows what else. I will try and document everything I do and post it for your, hopefully, enjoyment.[/SIZE]
So today I decided to make some Strawberry Jam with Yellow Moruga Scorpion's that I got from Pepperlover.com. The peppers were beautiful and definitely the hottest pepper I have put in my mouth. I wasn't brave enough to chew a whole one yet, but I will. I plan on eating a Bhut first because I'm a chicken. I have made Habanero Jelly before and it was delicious so I figured this could only be better.
I am going to apologize in advance for the picture quality. I didn't think about documenting it until the last minute and I used my cell phone. Next time I will get my girlfriend to take pictures while I work, today I was just trying to take my gloves on and off as few times as possible.
I used the Strawberry Jam recipe from Ball: Complete Book of Home Preserving with a couple of tweaks*. I actually made two batches of this recipe because I had the strawberries and peppers I needed to use up. Here are the [SIZE=11pt]ingredients[/SIZE], makes about eight 8-oz jars:
7 cups granulated sugar
8 cups whole strawberries (mine were already hulled, but if yours aren't, do it.)
4 tbsp lemon juice
1 pkg (1.75oz) powdered fruit pectin
Zest from one lemon*
6 yellow moruga scorpion peppers seeded* (I put as much of the membrane back into the mixture as I could after seeding)
The first step is to get all those jars and lids ready by placing them in pots of water at around a constant 180 degrees completely submerged until you are ready to fill them.
Then I suit up like I'm working in a meth lab, heavy duty yellow gloves and just wear some shorts so there is still a little excitement of burning your skin (you should probably wear a shirt while cooking but I still cook bacon shirtless for some stupid reason):
Get those peppers chopped and seeded:
We'll skip the part where I remove the seeds from the membrane, that's boring and tedious.
Next up is having all your [SIZE=11pt]ingredients[/SIZE] out and getting the sugar measured out and ready to go:
Then we give the strawberries a rinse (mine were previously frozen, you want to let them thaw out a bit if thats the case).
And add half of them to the food processor with the peppers:
Once you have that chopped up (I processed mine until the pepper pieces were approx. 1/8th inch square, YMMV), add that mixture to your cooking pot. Then take the other half of the strawberries and crush them up (I just used my hands) into whatever size chunks you would like in your jam and add them to the pot as well:
Then you will add your fruit pectin and whisk until it is completely dissolved. Now bring to a rolling boil stirring constantly.
Once you have reached a rolling boil you are going to add ALL of the sugar at once, just dump it in there. [SIZE=11pt]Now stir until it is completely dissolved and liquefied[/SIZE]. I don't have any pictures of that because I was working alone. Just keep stirring until the mixture again reaches a rolling boil. Now let it boil hard for 1 minute. Then remove it from the heat and use a slotted spoon to scoop off the foam and discard it in the sink.
Well I just realized I don't have any pictures of the filling process, but it's pretty simple stuff. Lay out a towel and place your pot of jam on it with room for a jar. Now one at a time remove a jar from your hot water bath and dump the water out of it right into the pot it came out of (you'll use this again later). Set your jar down on the towel and use a ladle to fill it leaving a 1/4 inch head space from the top of the jar. Now take a damp cloth and wipe off any jam that got on the jar threads or surface where your lid will go. Then take a wooden spoon or I used a wooden kabob skewer and move the jam inside of the jar around a little pushing down and stirring to get any air bubbles out of the mixture. Now take the lid out of the hot water bath and put the screw band on finger tight (about as tight as you would close a jar of mayo, it is just to hold the ring in place for processing, over tightening can actually be bad). Do this same process, one jar at a time, until all of your jars are full and your jam is gone.
Now that all of your jars are filled, place them back into the pot of water you had them sitting in from the start. Make sure they are standing up straight and that you have some kind of rack on the bottom to keep them off of the direct heat. I had to remove some water from my pot but you want at least an inch of water above the top of the lids. Turn the heat to high and wait until it reaches a rolling boil. Once a boil is reached set a timer for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes turn off the heat and let the water cool back down to a safe temperature. Now remove the jars carefully keeping them upright the entire time. Place them on the counter on a towel to cool. You should hear the "pop" sound of the lids sucking down as they cool. Some might take longer than others but eventually after a couple of hours all of the lids should be concave and not move when you push on them. If you push on a lid and it pops down and doesn't come back up that is fine. If some of them did not suck down and move when pushed you can either re-process them in a boiling water bath (remove the lids, clean the mating surface and use a different lid that was soaked in a hot water bath) or put them in the fridge and use them.
I made 8 ounce and 4 ounce jars. I've got a lot of jam to eat and give away.
Once this was done I cleaned up the mess I made and wiped all the counters down with a bleach cleaner and rinsed all the utensils off real well before loading them in the dish washer. I managed to not get any capsicum on myself during this entire process, except for in my mouth on purpose.
The color wasn't too impressive in the jar. But the flavor was awesome! It isn't as hot as I thought it would be but it has a pretty good kick and it catches up to you as you eat it.
I had a little extra jam in the pot when done filling all my jars so I threw it in the fridge for a bit and started eating it. That is sharp white cheddar, not a stick of butter as it appears to be.
I still got some left to make some hot sauce with:
Well I hope you enjoyed the post. I know jam making is probably pretty basic stuff for most of you but hopefully it will help someone out or inspire them to make some of their own! If this is well received I will make sure to document my future culinary creations for you all.
Thanks for reading and thank you Judy @ Pepperlover.com!
P.S. I just tried to upload this and apparently there is a limit on how many pictures you can include in a post so I had to delete a couple. Also the girlfriend just got home and tried the jam and said "that's really really spicy!" while trying not to cough, and she likes hot foods, so maybe it has more of a kick than I thought haha.
So today I decided to make some Strawberry Jam with Yellow Moruga Scorpion's that I got from Pepperlover.com. The peppers were beautiful and definitely the hottest pepper I have put in my mouth. I wasn't brave enough to chew a whole one yet, but I will. I plan on eating a Bhut first because I'm a chicken. I have made Habanero Jelly before and it was delicious so I figured this could only be better.
I am going to apologize in advance for the picture quality. I didn't think about documenting it until the last minute and I used my cell phone. Next time I will get my girlfriend to take pictures while I work, today I was just trying to take my gloves on and off as few times as possible.
I used the Strawberry Jam recipe from Ball: Complete Book of Home Preserving with a couple of tweaks*. I actually made two batches of this recipe because I had the strawberries and peppers I needed to use up. Here are the [SIZE=11pt]ingredients[/SIZE], makes about eight 8-oz jars:
7 cups granulated sugar
8 cups whole strawberries (mine were already hulled, but if yours aren't, do it.)
4 tbsp lemon juice
1 pkg (1.75oz) powdered fruit pectin
Zest from one lemon*
6 yellow moruga scorpion peppers seeded* (I put as much of the membrane back into the mixture as I could after seeding)
The first step is to get all those jars and lids ready by placing them in pots of water at around a constant 180 degrees completely submerged until you are ready to fill them.
Then I suit up like I'm working in a meth lab, heavy duty yellow gloves and just wear some shorts so there is still a little excitement of burning your skin (you should probably wear a shirt while cooking but I still cook bacon shirtless for some stupid reason):
Get those peppers chopped and seeded:
We'll skip the part where I remove the seeds from the membrane, that's boring and tedious.
Next up is having all your [SIZE=11pt]ingredients[/SIZE] out and getting the sugar measured out and ready to go:
Then we give the strawberries a rinse (mine were previously frozen, you want to let them thaw out a bit if thats the case).
And add half of them to the food processor with the peppers:
Once you have that chopped up (I processed mine until the pepper pieces were approx. 1/8th inch square, YMMV), add that mixture to your cooking pot. Then take the other half of the strawberries and crush them up (I just used my hands) into whatever size chunks you would like in your jam and add them to the pot as well:
Then you will add your fruit pectin and whisk until it is completely dissolved. Now bring to a rolling boil stirring constantly.
Once you have reached a rolling boil you are going to add ALL of the sugar at once, just dump it in there. [SIZE=11pt]Now stir until it is completely dissolved and liquefied[/SIZE]. I don't have any pictures of that because I was working alone. Just keep stirring until the mixture again reaches a rolling boil. Now let it boil hard for 1 minute. Then remove it from the heat and use a slotted spoon to scoop off the foam and discard it in the sink.
Well I just realized I don't have any pictures of the filling process, but it's pretty simple stuff. Lay out a towel and place your pot of jam on it with room for a jar. Now one at a time remove a jar from your hot water bath and dump the water out of it right into the pot it came out of (you'll use this again later). Set your jar down on the towel and use a ladle to fill it leaving a 1/4 inch head space from the top of the jar. Now take a damp cloth and wipe off any jam that got on the jar threads or surface where your lid will go. Then take a wooden spoon or I used a wooden kabob skewer and move the jam inside of the jar around a little pushing down and stirring to get any air bubbles out of the mixture. Now take the lid out of the hot water bath and put the screw band on finger tight (about as tight as you would close a jar of mayo, it is just to hold the ring in place for processing, over tightening can actually be bad). Do this same process, one jar at a time, until all of your jars are full and your jam is gone.
Now that all of your jars are filled, place them back into the pot of water you had them sitting in from the start. Make sure they are standing up straight and that you have some kind of rack on the bottom to keep them off of the direct heat. I had to remove some water from my pot but you want at least an inch of water above the top of the lids. Turn the heat to high and wait until it reaches a rolling boil. Once a boil is reached set a timer for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes turn off the heat and let the water cool back down to a safe temperature. Now remove the jars carefully keeping them upright the entire time. Place them on the counter on a towel to cool. You should hear the "pop" sound of the lids sucking down as they cool. Some might take longer than others but eventually after a couple of hours all of the lids should be concave and not move when you push on them. If you push on a lid and it pops down and doesn't come back up that is fine. If some of them did not suck down and move when pushed you can either re-process them in a boiling water bath (remove the lids, clean the mating surface and use a different lid that was soaked in a hot water bath) or put them in the fridge and use them.
I made 8 ounce and 4 ounce jars. I've got a lot of jam to eat and give away.
Once this was done I cleaned up the mess I made and wiped all the counters down with a bleach cleaner and rinsed all the utensils off real well before loading them in the dish washer. I managed to not get any capsicum on myself during this entire process, except for in my mouth on purpose.
The color wasn't too impressive in the jar. But the flavor was awesome! It isn't as hot as I thought it would be but it has a pretty good kick and it catches up to you as you eat it.
I had a little extra jam in the pot when done filling all my jars so I threw it in the fridge for a bit and started eating it. That is sharp white cheddar, not a stick of butter as it appears to be.
I still got some left to make some hot sauce with:
Well I hope you enjoyed the post. I know jam making is probably pretty basic stuff for most of you but hopefully it will help someone out or inspire them to make some of their own! If this is well received I will make sure to document my future culinary creations for you all.
Thanks for reading and thank you Judy @ Pepperlover.com!
P.S. I just tried to upload this and apparently there is a limit on how many pictures you can include in a post so I had to delete a couple. Also the girlfriend just got home and tried the jam and said "that's really really spicy!" while trying not to cough, and she likes hot foods, so maybe it has more of a kick than I thought haha.
