Last Basket Jelly

Every year, we allow the last of the tomatoes and chilies as long as possible to ripen in the Greenhouse but eventually, the time comes to strip the plants and use up the fruit – regardless of colour.

Habañero and Tomato Jam Recipe

The title refers to this being the last harvest from the greenhouse this year. After these were taken, the plants were pulled up and composted. After two years of bumper crops of Habañero and Tomato (green and red) we are already stocked up on dried and pickled chilies and lots of Chutney, so this year we had to figure out something new. Surprisingly we couldn’t find a recipe for preserving Tomatoes and Habañero Chilies in all of the usual sources so it was time to experiment. What we produced was A Habañero and Tomato Jam.

What went in to it (weights are approximate, basically we used up everything that was left):

• 200g of tomatoes of varying ripeness
• 220g of Habañero chilies (with one or 2 other chili types)
• 2 large red peppers (to bulk it out a bit and help with colour and sweetness. We cored the peppers and removed the seeds)
• 2 Kg of jam sugar
• 1 L of cider vinegar

Method

1. Put a saucer or plate into the freezer. You’ll see why below.
2. Wash your jars and sterilise  them by putting them into a cold oven on a baking tray and bringing the oven up to 140 degrees C. Keep them in there at that temperature for 15 minutes or so. Wash and then sterilise the lids using boiling water.
3. Cut the stalk end out of the tomatoes and cut a cross in the bottom of each one. Put the tomatoes into a bowl and cover with boiling water. After about 5 minutes (or longer if they are very unripe) the skins should be easy to remove.
4. Remove the seeds and core from each tomato and place the flesh into a sieve to allow the excess water drain from them.
5. In a food processor, blitz the chilies until they are finely chopped. I kept in the seeds as they look great floating in the finished product. Chop the red peppers and add these along with the tomatoes and blitz again.

Dissolve the sugar in the cider vinegar in a large steel pot over a medium heat. Once all of the sugar is dissolved, scrape the chilli/pepper/tomato mixture out of the bowl and into the pot. Bring the mix to the boil then turn down the heat and leave the mix at a rolling boil 10 minutes.

1. Now it’s time for the cold saucer. Go get it and put a small spoonful of the hot mix onto it. Allow it a few seconds to cool and then give the jam a gentle shove with your finger. If it has set and ‘crinkles’ when you push it, then the jam is ready. If it stays runny, then boil the mix for a bit longer.
2. When the jam is done, allow it cool.
3. When it’s safe, ladle the jam into your jars and seal tightly.
4. Clean up any spill on the outside of the jars before storing them.

The Chili and Tomato jam will keep for as long as any other jam, so long as your jars were clean and sterile. The jam is perfect to use on a sausage or bacon sandwich or on burgers. If you have made it with Habañero use sparingly!

 

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 10th, 2016 at 11:36 am and is filed under Recipes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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