Homemade Strawberry Habanero Jelly

Ever since I started growing my own habanero peppers, I've been trying all kind of different recipes, but this strawberry habanero jelly is by far my favorite one. This jelly is so tasty! At first you get the taste of the sweet strawberry jelly, and then all of a sudden you start to taste a little heat from the habanero peppers. I've never put peppers in my jelly before, but it definitely gives the jelly a nice kick. A lot of people have it in their mind that it's difficult to make jelly, but I'll tell you just how easy it is!



Ingredients:

4 cups of crushed strawberries (measure 4 cups after you have crushed the strawberries)
3 habanero peppers (minced, seeded and deveined)
7 cups of sugar
Juice from 1 lemon
1 tablespoon of apple cider vinegar
1 pouch of liquid fruit pectin (usually found on the baking isle)

1. Starting with the strawberries first, you're going to start by cutting off the hulls, and slicing the strawberries into halves. I find that cutting them into halves makes the crushing process a little easier. Then, using a potato masher or even better, your hands, crush the strawberries. I like chunks of fruit in my jelly, so I made sure to avoid crushing the strawberries too much. Measure out 4 cups of strawberries, and throw them into a large pot.

2. Into that same pot, you want to add the peppers, sugar, lemon juice, and apple cider vinegar, and bring it to a rolling boil (a rapid boil that does not stop when stirred).

3. Once the mixture is at a rolling boil, you want to add the pouch of liquid fruit pectin and constantly stir it for a full minute.

4. Remove  the jelly mixture from the heat, and quickly try to spoon out most of the foam that is leftover at the top. I find that the quicker you do this step, the easier it is to remove the foam. if you aren't able to get all of the foam out, it's not a big deal.

5. The last step is to jar your jelly. Using a funnel or ladle, transfer the jelly mixture into a jar and let it cool.  *Tip - As you can see in my picture, a lot of the fruit went to the top of the jar. If you use a butter knife to gently push down some of the fruit, you will get a more evenly distributed jelly.

If you want to store your jelly for a long period of time, you can also use the canning method when jarring this jelly. Unless you use the canning method, your jam is going to need to be refrigerated, and it should last you up to 3 weeks.

I told you this wasn't very hard to do. And the more you make it, the easier it is to perfect. If you try this recipe, leave a comment and let me know how it turned out. So far I have only tried this on toast, but if you come up with any creative uses for it, please do share them with me!