Weird Recipe Wednesday: Candied Jalapenos

Weird Recipe Wednesday: Because some recipes are so weird I just HAVE to try them.  My curiosity always gets the better of me.

Candied Jalapenos?  Yep.  I've had my eye on these for a long time. You see, I have a few recipes to put them in, but candied jalapenos are nowhere to be found this far north.  When some beautifully colored green, red and orange jalapenos found their way to my kitchen, I decided it was time to make my own candied jalapenos.  After finally getting around to making these, I realized they need to sit two entire weeks before they're ready.  Somehow those last two weeks seemed longer than the months of time that had passed since I first discovered the concept. I dated and labeled the jar with "do not open" and hid it in the back of the fridge.

I was going to wait to post about these until I used them in a recipe, but that would put you in the same waiting dilemma.  If you make them now, they'll be ready (or almost ready) by the time I use them in something, ummm, more weird.  You didn't think I would settle for just making candied jalapenos, did you?  No, I'm going to use them in a few other ideas that I'm trying really hard not to tell you about right now. I mean, if I tell you the crazy things I plan to do with them, you might think I'm weird or something.  So yeah, that's all I can say about that.

Anyway, you can find the instructions for making your own candied jalapenos here.  Canning recipes are not recipes you can take and adapt to make your own. You must follow them exactly. The site linked above provides detailed instructions. This post also has nice step-by-step pictures.

Remember what I told you about wearing gloves? Do that. The wearing gloves part. Wear gloves. Wear gloves. This time around, I finally remembered! Well, sort of.  I didn't have gloves so I used plastic sandwich bags.  They kept my fingers from burning, but made slicing the jalapenos a bit challenging.  Wear gloves.

After a few weeks of waiting, I finally popped open a jar for a taste.  Despite all that sugar, the heat still takes center stage. After a fleeting microsecond of sweetness, my mouth was overpowered by heat.  Burning heat. Tongue-burning, make-your-nose-run heat. I couldn't taste any of the seasonings, but I could feel the fire.  Good thing I have some recipes in mind to balance that burn. My lips are locked on the ultra weird ones, but I'll give you a few other ideas of how to use these.  Pairing these candied jalapenos with sweet, juicy fruit seems like a good place to start.  I imagine they'd be just right in the Spicy Cucumber-Cantaloupe Salad  and  Grilled Watermelon Salsa I made earlier this summer.  Had I not frozen the mangos to use in yesterday's post, I would have made this Candied Jalapeno Mango Salsa featuring juicy mangos, fresh pineapple, candied jalapenos, tomatoes, black beans and lime juice.  Only time will tell what other trouble I'll get into with these.

Food for Thought: "You never fail until you stop trying." -Albert Einstein