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Jalapeño Jelly is a delicious sweet and spicy spread for toast or crackers and can even be used as a glaze or sauce on meats.
This sweet and spicy jelly is great for so many reasons – especially a topping! We love to use it to serve with cream cheese and crackers. If you love jalapeños, you’ll love our Jalapeno Poppers and Dip.
Aka hot Pepper Jelly
If you love jams and jellies, you are sure to love this Jalapeño Jelly aka Hot Pepper Jelly!
Yes, the flavor is a little different than your typical Strawberry Jam but it is so good! The sweet with the heat is addicting! It’s great for pouring over cream cheese and serving with crackers or for basting on your meats.
What is Jalapeño Jelly? This jelly is really more of a jam. It is made up of jalapeño peppers, bell peppers, lots of sugar, vinegar, and pectin. While you may be tempted to reduce the sugar, don’t. This is meant to have lots of sugar. It’s a jelly! It also helps to perfectly balance out the heat from the jalapeños.
How to Make Jalapeño Jelly?
PREP THE JALAPEŃOS: (I recommend using rubber gloves when handling) Cut off the top of the jalapenos and remove the veins and seeds from half of the jalapeños. The veins and seeds are where more of the heat comes from and I have found that the perfect balance of heat and sweet in the jam comes from leaving the seeds and veins in half of them.
PREP THE BELL PEPPERS: You can really use whatever color of bell peppers you have on hand but I like the color and taste that one green and one red gives to the jam. Remove the stems and center. You can leave the veins but I like to cut mine out. Then roughly chop into large chunks since you’ll be pulsing them in the food processor.
FINELY CHOP PEPPERS: You can do this by hand but it will take a while. I recommend pulsing the jalapeños and peppers together in a food processor or blender. Chop until fine.
DRAIN: Pour the peppers into a mesh strainer to take off excess liquid so that your jam isn’t runny.
COOK: Add the drained peppers to a large 4 quart pot along with the sugar, vinegar, and salt. Bring it to a boil and boil for 10 minutes over medium-high heat.
ADD PECTIN: Stir in the liquid pectin and boil for 1 more minute. Remove pan from heat.
How to can Jelly:
Start out with sterile equipment. You’ll need to wash the jars and lids in hot soapy water (or run them through the dish washer).
The jars need to be warm when adding the hot jelly or they could crack. To keep the jars and lids hot and sterile, place them on a rack in a pot of boiling water. When the jam is done cooking, remove the jars, draining off water, and place on a towel.
Ladle jam into the jars using a wide mouth funnel. Be sure to leave 1/4 inch space from the top of the jar so there is room for expansion.
After filling the jars, wipe the rims with a paper towel and then top with the lids. Screw on the lids using just your thumb and index finger. This will ensure that they are on but not too tight.
Place the jars back into the pot of water on the rack and bring it to a boil. Boil for 10 minutes. (Add 1 more minute for each 1000 ft elevation above 1000 ft.) Remove and place on the towel about 1 inch apart. After a few minutes you should start to hear the cans seal with a pop. Leave the jars untouched on the counter for 12 hours.
Check the seal:
To see if your can is sealed, touch the middle of the lid. If the lid springs back up when you remove your finger you do not have a seal.
To check for a proper seal, remove the the ring of the lid and lift the can up off the counter 1-2 inches while holding the edges of the lid. If the lid stays attached then you have a good seal and it can be store for 12 months in the pantry.
pepper Jelly Uses:
There are a lot of surprising ways to use this sweet and spicy jelly, believe it or not!
- Glaze your steak, pork, or salmon with it. Pretty much any meat recipe that calls for a glaze will do really well with this hot pepper jelly.
- Put it on top of vanilla ice cream.
- Use it like regular jelly and make a spicy PB&J!
- Put it on top of cream cheese (or mix them together) to make a cracker spread (similar to our green chili cream cheese dip).
FOR MORE JALAPEñO RECIPES, CHECK OUT:
Jalapeno Jelly Recipe
Ingredients
Instructions
- Place all peppers in a food processor and pulse until peppers are finely chopped. Empty into a mesh strainer and drain off excess liquid.
- Place the chopped vegetables in a large stock pot and add in the sugar, vinegar, and salt. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat and boil for 10 minutes. Add the pectin and boil 1 more minute. Remove from heat
- Ladle jam into hot sterile jars, leaving 1/4 inch headspace. Top the jars with the lids and then seal jars in a hot water bath for 10 minutes.
- Jelly that is sealed properly can be stored on the shelf. If a seal did not form or if you opened the lid and broke the seal, jelly can be stored in the fridge. Let jelly rest 1 day to fully set up.
Video
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
This was my first time making jalapeño jelly. I followed recipe as written and it came out tasting amazing. I wondered if I could add more peppers to the recipe as I seem to have jalapeño jam on the top and jelly on the bottom of the jar. Or is there another solution for evenly dispersing the peppers in the jelly?
The only risk you run adding more peppers is it may add more water to the recipe which could alter the texture of the jelly. Once it is set, you can always stir it around a bit to mix those peppers around before serving.
When you preserve jelly or jam, if you turn the filled jars upside down a couple times while it cools, the fruit/vegetables will disperse fairly evenly through the jar.
Thanks for sharing the tip!
Need recipe
If you click on “Jump to Recipe” at the top of the page, it’ll take you to the recipe with ingredients and instructions.
Can this be made with Splenda, Swerve or Truvia? I love this jelly, but would love to try it with much lower sugar or even sugar free.
use the powder pectin labelled for sugar free or artificially sweetened jelly.
Mine was great! 3rd recipe I have tried
I used 8 medium to large jalapeños and
Left seeds in 4 of them. Mashed out the excess
Liquid from each type of pepper. Stirred for the first 5 minutes
Thickened Up perfectly.
I followed the recipe and only got enough for 4 1/2 jars what did I do wrong.
Made jelly recipe to the recipe, after I tried to figure out how many jalapeño peppers to use as my garden peppers were all smal,( 2-4”),, and how to convert 3oz of liquid pectin into powdered quantity. I do not know which part I figured wrong, the peppers or the pectin because my jelly turned out almost watery! Can I fix this batch somehow? I used all my peppers to make the jelly!
Liquid pectin is added to a recipe at the end, after your fruit, sugar and other ingredients have been cooked.
Powdered pectin is combined with the fruit/juice at the beginning of the recipe. The sugar is not added yet. You will bring the powdered pectin and fruit mixture to a full boil, and boil for 1 minute. Then add the sugar, and cook & stir until it is all dissolved, before continuing with the recipe.
Pectin Quantity
A pouch of liquid pectin and a pouch of powdered pectin cannot be substituted 1-for-1.
1 pouch liquid = 2 Tb powdered
2 pouches liquid = 4 Tb or 1 pouch (1.75 oz) powdered pectin
A typical pouch of powdered pectin (1.75 oz.) contains 4 tablespoons of powdered pectin. That is why you will often see the liquid come in 2 pouches, and powdered pectin comes with 1 pouch.
You’ll need much less of the powdered pectin when switching them out. Understanding these rules will also allow you to use liquid pectin in a recipe that calls for powdered.
Amazing jelly. So good. Easy to make and every batch has jelled perfectly.
No need for added pectin if you simply simmer longer until the vegetables are well cooked and translucent.
Tastes wonderful!!!! Super easy! I wish I would have double the recipe ❤️❤️❤️🌶🫑
Yay! I’m so glad you loved the jelly!!
The taste was great, but it had a grainy texture. Next time I will just finely dice the jalepenos or chop them in the food processor instead of blending them. It also jelled too must and had the texture of chewing gum — I did a 3 minute boil, so I will only boil 1-2 minutes next time. It would be nice if the recipe stated ounces of jalepeno instead of a quantity of 10. my jalepenos range in size from 2″-6″ long, so I had to just guess on the quantity.