Habanada Pepper Jelly

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Traditionally, Fall is the season of the harvest. While fewer of us lead the farmer’s life these days, there are plenty of us with home gardens that provide us a bountiful harvest as the weather turns cool. If all goes well, you can end up with enough food to keep yourself fed long after the garden winds down. Sometimes there is enough to feed a whole family. Sometimes even more. And sometimes, Summer’s warm, fuzzy thoughts of “Oh, the garden is doing so well” transform into Fall’s panicked worries of “OMFG, what the @#$% are we going to DO with all of this???”

That’s where Chele and I have ended up more than a few times with some of the things we have planted, but perhaps none more pointedly than in our experiences with habanada peppers. You may have noticed that we’ve posted quite a few habanada recipes on this site already, and that’s in no small part due to the fact that we have repeatedly found ourselves drowning in these heatless habanero relatives. Don’t get me wrong, we love them, but when you find yourself faced with ten or fifteen pounds of the things, burnout is inevitable. Fortunately, generations of people before us have come up with plenty of ways to preserve peppers. They freeze well, for starters. And, as we posted last year, they are a great candidate for pickling.

But there is another, less obvious route for preserving peppers that we have also turned to: jelly. There are all sorts of pepper jellies out there, including vinegary hot pepper jellies best suited for adding to savory dishes, and sweetened jellies that can be used more like traditional fruit jellies. Since habanada peppers have a rather fruity flavor and aroma, we felt that a sweet jelly was the way to go. There were two routes we could have gone: making an infusion from the peppers and straining it to make a clear jelly, or including them in the jelly itself. We chose the latter, since we felt it would preserve the most flavor. The bits of pepper incorporated in the jelly came out fully candied, and gave it a quality that is a little like marmalade. We left the seeds in ours, for maximum flavor, but you could choose to remove them prior to steeping if you don’t like the texture.

This jelly is sweet and fruity enough to stand on its own. We’ve enjoyed it as a spread on toast and English muffins, and as a mix-in for yogurt and cottage cheese. It is also a fantastic base for sauces and glazes, and is excellent with chicken. There is also Chele’s favorite application: jelly meatballs. Just swap out the grape jelly called for in your favorite jelly meatball recipe with this, and watch them disappear before your eyes.

When properly sealed and treated in a water bath, this jelly will be shelf-stable for at least a year.