Red pepper jelly, and look, Ma, no pectin!

I can’t remember when I first had red pepper jelly, which I know will sound like a really bad idea to some of you. I loved it. It was served over cream cheese, and we spread it on crackers as an hors d’oeuvre. Someone gave me a jar as a gift one time and I looked around for recipes. They all were made with pectin.

I am not irretrievably opposed to pectin, but each time I have used it in a recipe I have thought it made the jelly a bit tough, and I like a softer, more tender jelly. So in the past week or two I was mulling over the jelly-making process, and with a fair number of apples in the kitchen attracting fruit flies I thought: Hmmm, I wonder if I could make pepper jelly using an apple jelly base.

Well, I did. Apples, especially slightly underripe ones, are full of natural pectin. When I make blackberry jam, I usually add a couple of chopped-up apples to help with the thickening, and my dad used to say that his mom “always had a bag of cooked apple cores and skins dripping in the kitchen.” I guess my Gram used the pectin in her cooking.

There are lots of wild apples trees where I live, and the main beneficiaries are the deer. I gathered up a basket full and added them to the ones in the kitchen. Friends had given me some hot peppers they grew, and I figured those added to a couple of sweet red peppers would do the trick.

Homemade apple pectin, essentially apples with water added, cooked until soft and allowed to drip through a jelly bag, has a lovely pink color and a pleasant apple flavor. The recipe that follows starts with making apple pectin. Bear in mind that the yield of the apple liquid will depend on the juiciness of your apples.

Making red pepper jelly is truly a time for tasting as you go. Some friends of mine took one sniff of the jelly and figured out there was too much hot pepper in it to suit them, while another said, “it could use some more,” the same opinion my husband, Jamie, had. So add more if you like a real kick, or leave it out if you don’t like any heat at all.

Red Pepper Jelly

Yields 2 pints.

3 pounds apples, chopped

4 cups water

2 sweet red peppers

2 tablespoons or more hot red peppers, finely chopped

3/4 cup cider vinegar

4 cups apple juice

3 cups sugar

Heat the apples and water together until the apples are soft. Spoon into a jelly bag and suspend over a bowl until it ceases dripping. Use right away or refrigerate until you are ready to make jelly.

Remove ribs and seeds from the two sweet red peppers, chop coarsely and then chop more finely in a food processor or put through a food grinder. Mince the hot red pepper very finely if you use one and set aside. Put red pepper in a heavy-bottomed stainless steel kettle or preserve pan with the cider vinegar. Simmer about five minutes. Add the apple juice and sugar. Add hot pepper gradually, cooking and tasting until mixture has the desired level of heat. Cook mixture to a jelly stage, stirring frequently to keep it from scorching. When the jelly sheets from a spoon, put into jelly jars, cap and seal.