Bread and Butter Jalapenos

Photo: flickr user Lorena Cupcake

Ingredients

1 gal Sliced jalapenos *

Couple of fresh red cayenne-types per jar

7 1/2 cups 5%% acid white vinegar

3 cups (24 oz) of honey

3 teaspoons Powdered ginger

3 teaspoons Mustard seed

3 teaspoons Celery seed

1 1/2 teaspoons Tumeric powder

Preparation

* Or onion bulbs or sweet onion chunks. Soak for an hour in cold water after slicing (this will help float out some of the seeds)

Put the above fixings in a big pan/pot and bring to a slow boil.

Simmer for 10 minutes. Dump in jalapenos, onions, & cayennes and heat mix back up to a simmer and stir and turn mix for 10 minutes.

Pack peppers in canning jars putting a couple of cayenne-types in per jar, and leaving 1/2 inch head space. Pour the hot sweet mix in on the peppers, again leaving 1/2 incxh head space. Seal and immerse fully in a simmering hotwater bath at 180F (not a roiling boil) for 10 minutes. Remove and after cooling put in a dark cupboard for 6 weeks for aging.

Serve on Ritz kind of crackers (subliminal "Sex" written on crackers only makes them better) or as a stand-alone relish; Best danged home-canned jalapenos you'll ever munch.

Addendum: you can add alum at the rate of 1/4 teaspoon per pint jar when you are packing the peppers, but I've never been able to tell that this keeps them crisper so I've stopped using it.

You can also mix in cucumber chunks or slices at whatever replacement ratio you'd like as this recipe was adapted from a bread and butter cucumber pickle that my aunt made. This is my third year using it.

The 10 minute simmer bath is still going to leave you with a kind of mushy jalapeno, but if you don't overboil the jars it's not as bad as it could be.