One of our hands down favorite canning projects of the year is Cowboy Candy. It’s really just candied jalapenos, but most folks prefer the more fun name!
Cowboy Candy is pretty simple, from a canning perspective, so it’s a great recipe to work with if you’re just practicing the basics of canning. It’s a simple water bath canning job, so there’s no major concern with using a pressure canner.
If you’ve never had candied jalapenos before, they are definitely a treat. They are decidedly sweet forward, but with a small kick. We add them to burgers and other meats, which often takes them to a whole new level. A great, simple snack is a cracker or bread with a bit of cream cheese, plus a dollop of your Cowboy Candy. You can use them in dips, nachos, pizzas, on hotdogs, in tacos, as a garnish for a margarita or even spice up a glass of lemonade.
Our favorite recipe for Cowboy Candy is out of the book, “Not Your Mama’s Canning Book.” Overall, we’ve really enjoyed this canning book and it’s definitely on the “alternative” side of canning. (Though, still completely safe recipes.) If you’re looking to break out of the typical territory of Ball’s Blue Book, we recommend it. There’s also lots of recipes for Cowboy Candy online, though, and they’re all very similar. (We unfortunately don’t share any of our canning recipes here. We just never know if people that see it are versed in safe canning practices.)
If you do end up making Cowboy Candy, be sure to save that extra sauce! (You can even can extra in its own jar.) The sauce is great as a marinade for chicken, or even just as a brushed on sauce. It also works on pork, too, so you can give those porkchops a bit of something extra.
A lot of folks ask if you can use other kinds of peppers. The answer is, absolutely! Jalapenos are the most traditional, but if you want to kick it up to 11, certainly consider serrano, hot banana peppers, cayenne and pretty much any other pepper. If heat isn’t your thing, you can also do candied bell peppers instead. There’s no technical requirement that you have to grow the peppers yourself, either. You can do this up with grocery or farmers market bought peppers just as well.
We try to always have some Cowboy Candy on hand! Our stocks were getting low this year, so we decided to make a few jars with our harvest. It’s possibly one of our favorite canned treats! Oh, and once you crack a jar, it can last for months in the fridge. That is, if you can make it last that long!
