Home-style pickled jalapeños
Taqueria-style jalapeño strips with carrot and onion in a plain vinegar brine — the tested, lime-free way to put up a hot-pepper glut.
Makes
About 6 × 500 ml (pint) jars
Active time
1 hour
Total
1¾ hours, plus 12–24 hours cooling
Before you start
What keeps this jar safe
- Equal parts 5% vinegar and water is the tested brine for this quantity of peppers, carrot and onion — do not add more vegetables, more water or more garlic than the recipe gives.
- Carrot, onion and garlic are low-acid; one crushed clove per jar and the amounts written are what was tested.
- Peppers are raw-packed, so the brine must be boiling when it goes in and the jars go into a hot (not boiling) canner.
- Gloves on, hands off faces, and wash the cutting board before the next job; capsaicin lingers.
- The NCHFP recipe for true jalapeño rings uses an 18-hour lime soak for crispness, and its three rinse-and-soak cycles are what make it safe; this Ball recipe gets a similar jar without the lime.
This follows Ball: Home-Style Pickled Jalapeños. Quantities, acid and times are theirs; do not scale the vegetables without scaling everything, and do not change the vinegar, lemon juice or processing time.
Ingredients
- 1.6 kg (3½ lb) jalapeño peppers, seeded and quartered lengthwise
- 250 ml (1 cup) thinly sliced white onion
- 2 large carrots, thinly sliced
- 625 ml (2½ cups) white vinegar (5%)
- 625 ml (2½ cups) water
- 30 ml (2 tablespoons) pickling salt
- 15 ml (1 tablespoon) sugar
- 6 cloves garlic, crushed (1 per jar)
- Calcium chloride (Pickle Crisp), optional: ⅛ teaspoon per jar
Processing
- Jars
- 500 ml (pint)
- Headspace
- 1.25 cm (½ inch)
- Time at 0–300 m (0–1,000 ft)
- 10 min
- Higher up
- Ball’s altitude chart: add 5 min at 300–900 m (1,001–3,000 ft), 10 min at 900–1,800 m (3,001–6,000 ft), 15 min at 1,800–2,400 m (6,001–8,000 ft), 20 min at 2,400–3,000 m (8,001–10,000 ft).
Method
- 1
Set 6 washed 500 ml jars to heat in simmering water in the canner — not boiling — and wash the lids. Put on gloves before touching a pepper; this is one recipe where the children slice carrots and onions and stay off the peppers.
- 2
Halve the jalapeños lengthwise, scrape out the seeds and membranes, then cut each half lengthwise again into long strips. Toss the strips with the onion and carrot in a big bowl.
- 3
Combine the vinegar, water, salt and sugar in a stainless steel or enamelled pot and bring to a boil.
- 4
Put 1 crushed garlic clove in a hot jar and pack it tightly with the pepper mixture, leaving 1.25 cm (½ inch) headspace. Add ⅛ teaspoon Pickle Crisp if you want them firmer.
- 5
Ladle the boiling liquid over the vegetables, keeping the 1.25 cm headspace and making sure everything is covered. Free bubbles with a chopstick, wipe the rim, centre the lid and screw the band on fingertip-tight. Repeat jar by jar.
- 6
Lower into the canner with at least 2.5 cm (1 inch) of water over the lids, bring to a full rolling boil and process 10 minutes at 0–300 m.
- 7
Turn off the heat, uncover, wait 5 minutes and lift the jars onto a towel. Leave 12–24 hours without tightening the bands, then check the seals.
Keeps: 12 months in a cool dark cupboard. Refrigerate after opening and use within a month or two.
Variations: Leave more membrane in for heat, or use a mix of red and green jalapeños late in the season for a prettier jar. The brine, vegetables and time stay the same.
Tested source: Ball: Home-Style Pickled Jalapeños. Checked October 2026. If a jar did not seal, refrigerate it and use it within a few days. Never taste anything from a jar that is bulging, leaking, spurting or smells wrong — when in doubt, throw it out without tasting.
The crop
Hot peppers: when to pick, how to store, what else to make →
Drying is what hot peppers were made for. Thin-walled kinds — cayenne, Thai, chile de árbol, small red annuums — can be slit, threaded on heavy string and hung somewhere airy for three to four weeks; a ristra is just that, done neatly with fully ripe red pods (green ones shrivel and go a dull orange). Thick-fleshed jalapeños and habaneros mould before they dry in a Canadian October, so give them a dehydrator: 60 °C (140 °F) for two hours, then 54 °C (130 °F) until they are leathery to brittle. Pickled jalapeño rings and pickled hot peppers are tested water-bath recipes — 5% vinegar at the stated ratio, 10 minutes for 500 ml jars near sea level — and so is a cayenne-style pepper sauce made with vinegar. Fermented hot sauce is the current favourite and it is safe done right: a measured salt brine, peppers kept under the brine, three or four weeks at 20–22 °C until the bubbling stops and a pH strip or meter reads 4.6 or lower, then refrigerated. What does not work is treating a ferment as shelf-stable, or canning plain hot peppers in a water bath: fermentation on its own does not make a pantry-safe food, and plain peppers are low-acid and must be pressure-canned. Freezing is the lazy option and it is fine — whole, stems off, no blanching.
More for hot peppers
- Fermenting
Fermented hot sauce (refrigerator only)
Brined peppers, soured for a few weeks and blended: the sauce every pepper-grower ends up making. Ours stays in the fridge, because nobody has published a tested canning time for it.
About 500 ml of sauce from 500 g of peppers · 30 minutes active
The recipe → - Drying
Dried hot peppers and chili flakes
A year of chili flakes from a single plant: slice, dry, and crumble. Gloves on, windows open, children at a distance.
1 kg of fresh hot peppers gives about 100–150 g dried — a full 500 ml jar of flakes · 30 minutes active
The recipe → - Water-bath canning
Green tomato salsa verde
The frost-night answer for a counter full of green tomatoes: a sharp, cumin-scented salsa verde in small jars.
About 6 × 250 ml (half-pint) jars · 1 hour active
The recipe →