Does this pickled roasted pepper recipe seem acidic enough?

October 10, 2014 12:44 PM

Last year I made the best pickled roasted pickled peppers last year but I didn't process it and only kept it in the fridge so I wouldn't have worried as much about the acidity level. This year I want to process them and keep them in the pantry. Does this seem acidic enough?

I can't find my notes on what were the best pickled roasted peppers ever. I think I've found the right recipe but I am concerned about the acidity level this year since I want to process them for pantry storage. The recipe doesn't call for much vinegar and the peppers are releasing a fair bit of liquid after roasting and peeling. My questions are:

Does this seem like enough vinegar? (I'm not sure the wine lowers the pH.)
Should I drain the peppers of the liquid? (I kind of hate to loose the flavor in the liquid.)

Thanks!

From The Complete Book of Small-Batch Preserving
6-8 small sweet red peppers (about 2#)
1 clove garlic
1/2 cup dry white wine
1/2 cup white vinegar
1/4 cup cider vinegar
1/2 chopped onion
2 T sugar
1/2 T dried oregano
1 t pickling salt

Roast the peppers and garlic. Put the peppers in a bag and remove the skin and seeds and stem when cool. Cut into 1 in strips.

Remove the skin from the garlic and mash. Combine wine, vinegars, onion, garlic, sugar, oregano and salt in a saucepan. Boil gently for 5 minutes.

Pack peppers into hot half-pint jars to within 3/4 inch of the top. Pout boiling vinegar mixture to within 1/2 inch of top. Seal and process 15 minutes in a boiling water bath.

posted by Beti to Food & Drink (13 answers total)

Here is the necessary ratio of vinegar to food according to the Australian food safety people.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 1:02 PM on October 10, 2014

The recipe actually looks pretty okay relative to the suggested bell pepper pickling guide from the USDA - page 6-21. Their recipe uses a 50/50 mix of vinegar to water, while your uses a 3/2 ratio of a vinegar to water. Everything else seems pretty proportionally similar. I would just make sure your cider vinegar is standardized at 5% or above.
posted by fermezporte at 1:06 PM on October 10, 2014

This is essentially the kind of recipe I've seen and used for pickled peppers. The only change I'd make is to use all (1.5 cups) white wine vinegar (or just white vinegar). I think the apple cider vinegar is too strongly flavored for peppers, but whatever. Be sure the vinegar is at least 5% acidity. Also be sure to remove bubbles as best you can before processing.

Here is the USDA guide to canning (guide 6) has info about picked things. Many of their recipes are about 1 cup of 5% vinegar to 2 pounds of peppers.
posted by sevenless at 1:07 PM on October 10, 2014 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: fermezporte, the recipe doesn't actually call for water and sevenless, it's only 3/4 cup vinegar altogether.
posted by Beti at 1:28 PM on October 10, 2014

Yeah, my math needs some help. The USDA's pickled roasted pepper recipe (page 6-22) calls for 5 cups of 5% vinegar, 1 cup of water, and 7 pounds of peppers. Your vinegar:wine ratio is less than that. You can either up the amount of vinegar in your recipe or maybe use white wine vinegar instead of the wine.
posted by sevenless at 1:41 PM on October 10, 2014

If you want to be sure, you can find out by sacrificing one jar of your product. Once you've put everything together, empty a jar into the blender and blend until it is completely smooth. Test the pH with pH paper. If its below 4.5, Clostridium botulinum can't grow and its safe to can.
posted by juliapangolin at 2:08 PM on October 10, 2014 [1 favorite]

Sevenless - I was using the recipe for bell peppers on page 6-21, which calls for 3 cups of water and 3 cups of 5% vinegar.

Beti - a mistype on my part, I was counting the wine in your recipe as "water" equivalent. If anything, wine has more preservative properties than water.
posted by fermezporte at 4:21 PM on October 10, 2014

Response by poster: Thanks for taking the time to answer, everyone. Full disclosure - I was already making the recipe when I posted and done is done. I have emailed OSU's Extension Agency and I'm going to try to track down the authors. I think I'll just put the jars in the fridge until I can get a confirmation/just decide they need to be eaten sooner (they may not last long enough to spoil...) I'll post back if I find anything definitive.
posted by Beti at 6:22 PM on October 10, 2014

Doing a little math, the white vinegar alone would get you below pH 5 if everything else were replaced with water. Given that most everything else you have in there is on the acidic side of things, I think you'll be just fine.

If you want to be sure, you would get pretty much the same results as what juliapangolin suggests (without having to sacrifice a jar) if you wait a month or two and then put a drop of your supernatant on a piece of pH paper.
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 11:56 PM on October 10, 2014

That recipe is on page 150 of The Complete Book of Small-Batch Preserving by Ellie Topp and Margaret Howard. It is a book I own and trust.

Note that it should be 1/2 CUP of coarsely chopped onion.

As there's no water added aside from what the peppers exude (which would be there even if you didn't roast them), it seems to me to count as straight-up pickling.

For comparison purposes here's the ingredients list for Pickled Roasted Red Peppers from page 317 of Ball Complete edited by Judi Kingry and Lauren Devine:

4 large cloves garlic, roasted
1.5 c white vinegar
1.5 c cider vinegar
1.5 c dry white wine
1 cup coarsely chopped onion
1/2 c granulated sugar
2 T dried oregano
4 tsp pickling salt
20 medium sweet red peppers, roasted
posted by mgar at 7:38 AM on October 11, 2014

Response by poster: Just for future reference, here's the reply from the OSU Ask An Expert:

"I have not seen a reliable source for a recipe for roasted pickled peppers. When you roast them you change the density of the product. I agree that the recipe does not have a lot of vinegar but also the measurement of the peppers is rather subjective. How big is a small pepper and 1/2 of an onion. I realize that this is a small batch but weight or cups are a better estimate of quantity of the low acid foods. Not sure what the pH of dry wine is so there are too many variables for me to recommend processing them and be sure they would be safe.

You might want to take a tested recipe from the USDA website or from our OSU website http://extension.oregonstate.edu/fch/food-preservation and look at PNW 355 Pickling Vegetables. There is a hot pepper recipe on page 16. You could use sweet peppers (measure quantity first) and could roast them. If you want to substitute wine for the water that would be ok. At least you have some weights and measures for this recipe. You could reduce the size of the recipe for a smaller batch. If you roast them be sure not to pack them too tightly into the jars. Look at the estimate number of jars indicated for the recipe and make sure you are close. The peppers need to absorb the vinegar liquid in order to pickle and this won't happen if it is packed to dense.

Thanks for using Ask an Expert

Nellie Oehler"

I'm not sure what I'll do with them at this point. I'll for sure keep them in the fridge. Maybe I'll try freezing a jar or two - I wouldn't be eating them alone but using them in other recipes so the thawed texture isn't really an issue.

mgar, that recipe looks about the same, doesn't it? (And yes, it should be 1/2 cup, that's what I used) I'll sit down with the calculator and see if the proportions are the same. If two different sources, especially one being Ball, I'd feel better about this whole thing.

Thanks again everyone!
posted by Beti at 7:45 AM on October 11, 2014

Here's the complete Ball recipe and instructions on their web site. It makes "about 4 pints" and is processed for 15 minutes.

If you freeze them right in the jars you might want to allow more headspace in case the liquid expands.

(mmm, now I really want to roast and pickle the last of my hot peppers instead of just making sriracha.)
posted by mgar at 8:16 AM on October 11, 2014

Response by poster: That looks pretty good, mgar. I'll bookmark that for the next round. Thanks!
posted by Beti at 5:48 PM on October 12, 2014 [1 favorite]