I have chilis, lots of chilis, and not enough lemons ripe yet to make Chili Jam. I’ve made some Pickled Chilis so as to have some chilis for curries and spicing up winter dishes, but I’ve still got chilis. And this year, the tamarillos have been really prolific.
I’m not a big preserve maker, nor do I freeze vegetables. I sun-dry tomatoes and make passata if I have enough, but I am lucky enough to live in a climate where, if I plant sequentially and we eat seasonally, we can eat fresh all year. So preserves tend to just sit on the shelf looking decorative.
So if I make preserves, it’s not to preserve things but because the result is worth making all of its own account and not just to keep something for later.
The Recipe:
This recipe made these four jars – about 1.4 kg altogether.
The first thing to do is de-seed your chilis. I used about 40 medium sized chilis, but the recipe is forgiving. My chilis are medium-hot, and 40 sounds like a lot, but the resulting sauce is pleasantly spicy, not blast your socks off hot. To de-seed them, chop the tops off and swivel the point of a fine knife blade round inside them to loosen the seeds. Use gloves or really, really remember not to touch your eyes for hours afterwards! Rinse under running water to remove most of the seeds. There is no need to be very diligent about this. The more seeds you miss though, the hotter the resulting sauce will be.
I use a blender to make quick work of finely chopping the deseeded chilis, along with
- 1½ cups of malt vinegar
- 1 dessertspoon of salt
- 1 cup of raw sugar
- 3 or 4 cloves of garlic
- a thumb of ginger, peeled
- a thumb of fresh turmeric (or a teaspoon of dried)
Many metals will react with acid fruit and vinegar, so use a stainless steel or enamel pot.
Simmer the chili-vinegar-sugar mix with the flesh from 15 tamarillos (leave them chunky – just halve them and scoop out the flesh with a spoon), until the sauce has reduced and gone a bit syrupy – about 40 minutes.
While the sauce is cooking, put your jars and their lids on to boil for 10 minutes or pressure cook for 5 minutes to sterilize them. I just recycle any jars of the kind that the lid pops when you open them.
Ladle the hot sauce into hot sterilized jars. Screw the sterilized lid onto the jar. As the jar cools, the middle of the lid should pop in, showing that you have an airtight seal. Wait until the jars are cool to wash the outside (cool water on hot jars will crack them).
The sauce will keep for several weeks in the fridge, so any that doesn’t completely fill a jar can be eaten first. It’s great with meat, anything with cheese, lots of kinds of vegetable patties or fritters, on sandwiches ….
That looks delicious. I always have birds eye chilies popping up in my garden,but they are so hot – I really must find a slightly milder one.
Looks amazing, Linda! Perhaps a good use for those (to me) disgusting Tamarillos. My purple chillies turned out to be really hot, very small and full of seeds. The plant and fruit ended up in the rubbish bin. Bought some cayenne-type Chillies and didn’t use gloves. Oh dear. Burning hands for hours. Neither Milk nor oil nor washing did much; by the morning and copious applications of ice, they were OK. Use gloves! I made a sauce/jam – it partly jelled using some really old Jamsetta and partly reduced. Added frozen, thawed Peaches, Plums and fresh Onions to the Chillies, a touch of salt and some sugar; chopped up in the food processor. It might be a bit weird but it tastes scrumptious – a bit pingy but not enough to take the lining from my mouth 😉
Tamarillos are my daughter’s very favourite fruit – I never got to cook with them at all while she was at home. But now she has left, I’m getting to discover how good they are to cook with. They’re a good substitute for pomegranate molasses in Middle Eastern recipes, and their acidity works well in anything that has vinegar and sugar in it. And they make a great “fruit peel” face mask if nothing else!
Having decided, just last week, that I want to make sweet chilli sauce rather than buy it, this recipe is very timely! And looks wonderful, I like the addition of tamarillos.
Great recipe Linda, thanks! And thanks also for the link to your pickled chillies – they look very delicious..
Í will definitely have to keep this in mind for about May when my tamarillos ripen. It looks and sounds lovely.
Made it last night and love it! Thanks for sharing 🙂
Now have made about the fourth batch, and done it with friends and taught them… I am using it as sweet chilli, as a salsa with burritos, dipping sauce mixed with sour cream…. it’s great
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