Quick & Crunchy Pickled Jalapeños

Why buy a jar at the grocery store when you can make a home-made batch of crunchy pickled jalapeños with peppers plucked from plants on your patio? These are refrigerator pickles, so there’s no canning involved. 

If you love adding spice to your foods with hot peppers, be sure to try this homemade smoky hot sauce, too! Or for a sweeter way to use jalapenos, make this hot pepper jelly.

Pickled jalapeño peppers are a favorite food around here and I usually have a store-bought jar at the ready to add to panini sandwiches, to top a pizza, or to sprinkle on Mexican food.

But since gardening this year has yielded such a good chile pepper crop, I decided to create my own easy recipe for pickled peppers.

Crunchy Pickled Jalapeños 

This recipe takes just minutes to make, though you’ll want to let the peppers sit in the brine for a week or so before enjoying them. 

Ingredients

Jalapeño peppers  — Just a couple of jalapeño plants will net enough for a nice batch of crunchy peppers for the fridge. Can you use other hot peppers? You absolutely can! 

Vinegar — This recipe calls for distilled vinegar, but you could substitute apple cider vinegar if you like. 

Garlic — Adding a whole clove of garlic to the jar gives it a little extra flavor

Sugar — The addition of sugar helps to tame the heat a little; if you’re looking for a keto pickled jalapeños, simply skip it. Use your favorite brand of granulated cane sugar. I prefer organic. 

Salt — Use sea salt, NOT table salt. Table salt often has anti-caking agents that can cause cloudiness in pickles.

Making these Quick Pickled Jalapeños 

Start by heating the brine: Measure vinegar, water, salt, turmeric, and sugar into a saucepan and bring to a low simmer over medium heat.

Before you start slicing the hot peppers, please save yourself some pain and slip on a pair of kitchen gloves to protect your hands and eyes while working with them.

Use a knife or mandoline to slice the peppers into rings 1/8″ thick or less. Transfer jalapeño slices — seeds and all — into pint-sized jars, pushing them down slightly. This recipe will fill three pint sized jars. 

Pour hot brine over the peppers in the jars; a canning funnel makes it easy to do this without spilling. Twist on a lid and allow the jars to cool to room temperature. Transfer to refrigerator and allow to marinate for several days before using them.  

Using these Hot Peppers

My son, a lover of hot peppers, will tell you that just about any recipe will benefit from a sprinkling of these crunchy jalapeños. He uses hot peppers on everything! 

• Stir some into scrambled eggs
• Sprinkle jalapeno slices onto refried beans
• Roll up into a shredded chicken taco
• Add them to salsa
• Sprinkle them on nachos
• Add them to quesadillas

Originally published in October 2020; this post has been edited and updated.

Click to save or share!