Easy Pickled Jalapeño Recipe

I love coming up with tasty recipes for everything from gluten-free goodies to refreshing drinks.

For All Jalapeño Lovers

After a trip to México, the chili capital of the world, I got hooked on jalapeño chili peppers. I eat them at any opportunity! In Peru, buying a jar of imported jalapeños can be quite expensive. However, on a recent trip to Chinatown, Lima, I found to my delight that I would now be able to feed my chili fix cheaply because I could buy fresh jalapeños by the kilo. No more store-bought pickles!

I'm basing this recipe on one passed on to me by a good friend who understands that life without jalapeños isn’t an option. I’ve made a couple of tweaks, like adding smoked jalapeños (a.k.a. chipotle), my other addiction! This recipe is based on 20 large jalapeños, but go ahead and make a big batch like I did. I got hold of just over a kilo (about 2 pounds), 70 jalapeños in total, and filled these two jars.

Cooking Time

• Preparation: 10 mins to wash and chop
• Cooking: About 10 mins to boil pickling liquid
• Resting time: 10 mins before bottling

Ingredients

• 20 large jalapeño peppers
• 1 1/2 cups water
• 1 1/2 cups white vinegar
• 6 tablespoons white sugar
• 2 tablespoons salt
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1 teaspoon oregano

Clean your beautiful Jalapeños

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How to Make Your Pickles

1. Put all your ingredients except the jalapeños into a pan: water, sugar, salt, vinegar, garlic (one clove crushed the other whole) & oregano and bring to the boil.
2. Add the chopped jalapeños to the pan of pickling liquid and stir for 1 minute. Take the pan off the heat and leave to cool for about 10 mins. Stir every so often so that all the jalapeños enjoy your pickling mixture. You will see them change colour slightly form dark green to the recognizable olive green hue.
3. Scoop out the jalapeños and place them into your clean storage jars. Fill up the remainder of the jars with your pickling liquid. Secure the lids and store in the fridge.

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How to Spice It Up a Bit

Add your own touch to your pickles by adding to your filled jars of jalapeños a little of your favorite ingredient. Try adding more whole garlic cloves, whole red chilli or smoke it up by adding chopped dried chipotle peppers.

Do you know your chillies?

For each question, choose the best answer. The answer key is below.

1. Are birds affected by eating chillies like humans are?
   • Yes
   • No
2. Which is the hottest part of the chilli?
   • Seeds
   • Placenta
   • Stem
3. Which is the hottest chilli in the world?
   • Ghost chilli
   • Dragons breath chilli
   • Carolina Reaper
4. Are the jalapeño and chipotle form different plants?
   • Yes
   • No
5. Can you use cayenne pepper to stop bleeding on a wound?
   • Yes you can.
   • Don’t be stupid it will just irritate and make it worse.

Answer Key

1. No
2. Placenta
3. Dragons breath chilli
4. No
5. Yes you can.

© 2017 lemonkerdz

Thank for reading this article, please leave your Comments

lemonkerdz (author) from LIMA, PERU on January 25, 2020:

Liza thank you for taking time to comment. Be careful these are addictive, personally I’m not into many things pickled but jalapeños are different. These are fantastic to eat with chilli con carne or even a simple cheese sandwich.

Liza from USA on January 23, 2020:

My husband loves jalapenos. As I'm new to this type of pepper but, I love its flavor in the salsa, and sometimes I used in the fried eggs. Usually, we bought a lot of jalapenos for making homemade salsa. Last year, we stored the salsa in the cans, and save it for the winter. I think this is something we can do with the leftover jalapenos we bought from the store. Thank you for sharing this great idea!

lemonkerdz (author) from LIMA, PERU on December 05, 2017:

Thanks vespawoolf for your input. Be careful they are addictive. I made 2 large Milner jars full to the brim, one jar is 3/4 gone after just 2 weeks.

Enjoy your jalapeños.

Vespa Woolf from Peru, South America on December 05, 2017:

These jalapeños are the bomb! I wasn’t sure about the sugar but I have to say these taste better than store bought. I added a couple of bay leaves for good measure. Next time I’ll add extra garlic because it’s so delicious. Thanks for this great recipe.

lemonkerdz (author) from LIMA, PERU on October 24, 2017:

Thanks Mary Wickison your time will come where you will get a surprise at the market. I couldn’t get any for years here in Peru so I had to pickle a 1kg while I had them.

Mary Wickison from Brazil on October 24, 2017:

Although I can't get jalapenos where I live, I will try this with other chilies. Thanks for the recipe and instructions.