Polish sweet-and-sour pickled peppers, crunchy, in jars for winter
Strips of red and yellow bell pepper in a sweet-and-sour brine with mustard seed, garlic and allspice, pasteurised briefly so they stay firm. The brine ratio is the same as for pickled cucumbers, with a little more sugar, because peppers like sweetness. Six jars from two kilos, ready for sandwiches, salads and the plate beside meat.
Your own work in that: 40 min.
- Cutting 20 min
- Brine and jars 20 min
- Pasteurising 15 min
- Cooling 30 min
Step by step
0 / 6 doneCut the peppers
Wash the peppers, halve them, remove the seeds and white membranes. Cut into strips 2–3 cm wide, or into quarters. Mix the colours: in the jar they look like stained glass.
Ingredients: 2000 g red and yellow bell peppers · 6 cloves garlic · 3 tsp mustard seeds · 12 pcs allspice berries · 6 pcs bay leaves · 12 pcs black peppercorns · 6 tsp oil
TipChoose thick-walled, firm peppers. Thin, wrinkled ones go limp in the jar however briefly you pasteurise.
Strips of 2–3 cm, no membranes or seedsBoil the brine
Bring the water with the vinegar, sugar and salt to the boil, stirring until the sugar dissolves. Scald six jars of about 500 ml and their lids with boiling water.
Ingredients: 1000 ml water · 250 ml spirit vinegar, 10 % · 250 g sugar · 1½ tbsp salt
TipThe ratio to remember: 4 parts water, 1 vinegar, 1¼ sugar by volume, plus one and a half tablespoons of salt per litre of water. Peppers get more sugar than cucumbers because their sweetness should show.
Water, vinegar, sugar, salt: boilBlanch the peppers
Drop the strips in batches into the boiling brine for 1 minute per batch, lift out with a slotted spoon. Blanching softens the peppers just enough to pack tightly and drives the air out of the flesh, which is what makes jars lose liquid.
A minute in the boiling brine, in batchesPack the jars
In the bottom of each jar: a garlic clove, half a teaspoon of mustard seed, 2 allspice, a bay leaf, 2 peppercorns. Pack the peppers upright and tightly, alternating colours, to 2 cm below the rim. Blanched strips bend, so you will fit more than you think.
Spices at the bottom, peppers upright, tightPour and seal
Bring the brine back to the boil and pour into the jars to cover the peppers, 1 cm from the rim. You can float a teaspoon of oil on top of each jar, as many home recipes do: it gives the peppers a gloss and softens the brine. Wipe the threads, screw the lids on tightly.
Hot brine to the neck, a teaspoon of oilPasteurise briefly
Stand the jars in a pot lined with a cloth, add hot water to three-quarters of their height, bring to the boil and pasteurise 15 minutes from the boil, over low heat. Lift out, stand upside down for 10 minutes, turn upright and leave to cool. The peppers need 2 weeks to take on the brine; they keep a year in a dark pantry.
TipA quarter of an hour, no longer. The peppers are already blanched, so long pasteurising only gives overcooked, limp strips.
Fifteen minutes, then two weeks of waiting
Before you start
With onion and chilli
Onion rings between the pepper strips and half a small chilli in each jar: a sharper, more Balkan version.
With honey instead of sugar
150 g honey instead of 250 g sugar, added to the brine off the heat. A gentler sweetness, a darker brine.
Jars lose liquid in pasteurising
Too full or boiling too hard. Leave a centimetre from the rim and pasteurise in barely bubbling water, not a rolling boil.