Mom's Hot Pepper Jelly Recipe (2024)

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Like many first-time gardeners, my humble backyard garden has produced more vegetables than I know what to do with! So, I spent last Saturday morning with Mom and learned to make hot pepper jelly using several pepper varieties from my vegetable garden: bell peppers, banana peppers, and jalapeños.

I’m sure for the sake of accuracy, I should probably call this jam since we blended the pulp of the peppers and seeds to make it, and jelly is typically made with just the juice of something (or so the internet tells me). But jelly is what Mom calls it, so who am I going to believe?

The process of learning to make jellies, jams, and preserves was a new experience for K and I during our visit. Mom walked us through the steps, equipment, sterilization methods, etc. I’m working on a longer post about general rules of thumb for home canning, so be on the lookout for a separate walkthrough to cover those concepts in more detail. This post is meant mainly for the simple, straightforward recipe, but I have some very basic info here, too.

In order to keep everything as uncontaminated as possible, things moved pretty quickly once it came off of the heat! You’ll need to sterilize your jars before beginning, but Mom keeps them inside the dishwasher (still hot) until they are ready to use, and the lids/bands in a pot of hot water on the stovetop as we prepared the jelly.

Home Canning Supplies

• Regular mouth quilted jelly jars
• Canning essentials set (for handling the hot lids without contamination, etc.)
• Stainless steel canning rack(Mom didn’t have this at the time we made these, so she used a dishtowel on the bottom of the pot instead — but I just picked this up for her as a thank-you for teaching me, so now she’ll have one!)
• Large sauce pan
• Blender
• Large pot (we use Mom’s big crab pot, but you can also buy a pot + canning rack combo)
• Ladle

Onto the recipe!

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A Note from Me & Mom:

Instagram is fully responsible for this recipe posting so quickly after this weekend. I went over to Mom and Dad’s with the intention of learning how to make Mom’s pepper jelly from my garden and sharing it on the blog for you at some point. But what I didn’t expect was the number of comments on my post about sharing more from “Cathy’s Kitchen.”

We have lots of family recipes like this, and I’m thrilled that so many of you want the stories that go with (like the time Granny knocked her kitchen timer in a big batch of her Sunday sauce, and we didn’t realize where it had gone until she thawed some out later that year — we still laugh about that one! Recipe coming in a future visit to Mom’s). I’m still pretty new to cooking and have zero intentions of making this blog all about recipes, but I’m glad I get to sprinkle in the things I’m learning as we go, much the same way I have with the rest of my home and DIY journey. And even to those of you who weren’t following when she passed, it means a lot to bring some of her favorite activities to the blog (she also taught me cross stitch, which you’ve already seen here too!). ❤️

Don’t forget to pin it to save for later!