For mild pickled peppers use sweet red, yellow or orange peppers, for hotter pickles add hot peppers to the jar. I forgot to weigh the peppers, but to give you an idea on the amount of peppers used in the recipe; I took a basket of Hungarian, mostly red peppers from the garden, sliced them and packed them into eight 500ml jars. There was almost nothing left of one batch of brine, so for every 8 jars you will need 5 cups of white vinegar and 5 cups of water. I am very much in favour of oven processing; unless you are preserving meat or fish, you don’t need pressurizing. As for water canning or oven canning, the boiling point is a constant [it will not change] so it makes no difference if you process the jars in a water bath or in the oven. Oven processing takes longer, but in the long run will save your jars and you will never have to deal with the mess a cracked bottle can make, not to mention the waste. For oven processing I would place the jars directly on the oven rack, turn on the oven to 225F and leave it for a couple of hours. After that I would check it often and here is the gauge I follow: When you see tiny bubbles running up in the liquid or when the peppers begin to rise up [only a little, not a lot], wearing oven mitts!!!, remove the jars from the oven one by one, being careful not to bang them together. But since I had plans for the afternoon, I stuck the jars in a water bath for 15 minutes. All jars survived and by Canadian Thanksgiving we will have vibrant, crisp pickled peppers.
8 [500 ml] jars filled with sliced peppers
5 cups white vinegar
5 cups water
2-1/2 Tbsp pickling salt
1 Tbsp sugar
• Sterilize the canning jars and set them aside. You may do this in a water bath or in the oven.
• Wash peppers thoroughly and drain.
• Remove the tops and cores and slice the peppers into rings or lengthwise.
• Rinse again to remove most of the pepper seeds that stuck to the peppers and drain them well.
• Pack the sliced peppers into sterilized jars and set them aside.
• Heat the snap lids in hot [not boiling] water. Keep them hot until ready to use.
• Prepare the brine next.
• Place the remaining ingredients into a pot and bring it to full rolling boil.
• Pour the brine into the jars leaving headspace, wipe the rims and place on the lids and the screw caps.
• Process in the oven [read comments above] or in a water bath for 15 minutes.
• Remove the jars and let them cool down completely.
• Label and store in a dark place.
• Jars that failed to seal place in the fridge and use first.
• Canned goods are best within the first year.
