When planning for emergency food storage, one of the often overlooked and yet essential items is the storing and preserving of peppers for both taste and health. Peppers have grown in popularity in recent years, and a wide variety is now available in neighborhood grocery stores.
Native to the Americas, most varieties belong to the Capsicum annuum species. Almost all peppers turn from green to yellow, orange, red, or purple when they are fully ripe. Green bell peppers are often harvested before they are ripe and are usually less expensive because they can better withstand transport and tend to last longer.
Peppers range in pungency from the sweet bell to the fiery habanero. The chemical substance that makes some peppers hot is capsaicin (pronounced “kap-'say-isin”). Each type of hot pepper has its own distinctive flavor and level of hotness.
This very informative 13 page guide about the storing and preserving peppers from the University of California gives all the information anyone would need to know about storing and preserving peppers. It comes with plenty of charts that make the information for storing and preserving peppers easy to understand.
Topics Include
- Safety tips for preserving peppers
- Storing fresh peppers
- Freezing peppers
- Drying peppers
- Pickling peppers
- Canning unpickled roasted peppers
- Storing canned and pickled peppers
- Sweet pickled peppers
- Hot pickled peppers
- Hot chili salsa
- Marinated peppers
- Pepper relish
- Pepper jelly
- Apricot pepper jelly
