Pickled Chillis

Pickling chillis is such a great way to preserve the flavour of fresh chillis, they are awesome on salad, eggs, tacos…

They are mega simple: chop your chillis up, stick them in a jar, add a light coloured vinegar add until they are covered – here I’ve used cider vinegar because it was in the cupboard. A spoonful of sugar and some salt. They only need an hour or so to pickle if you want to use them on the same day, or just keep a lovely jar full in the cupboard and add them to anything you fancy!

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Harissa

Harissa is a great spicy tasty sauce which you can use to marinate protein, add to salad dressings, add to yoghurt as a dip. I made a good load and store some in a jar in the fridge for later, tonight I’m using it to marinate some prawns for dinner.

This was my version today:

2 red chillis

A clove of garlic

A pickled roasted red pepper – Lidl sell these for about £1.50 for a jar. They are awesome to keep in the cupboard.

2 tbsp of smoked Rapeseed oil (another amazing cupboard ingredient)

1 tsp of smoked paprika

1 tsp cumin seeds

Salt and pepper.

Today there was also a loads of bags of spinach and amazing tiny crazy spicy green chillis, I saved them from landfill and got them in the freezer for us to use for curries.

I wilted the spinach in a pan then portioned it into a cupcake tin and stuck that in the freezer, once they are frozen you can keep take them out the tin. When you want to use them just chuck them in the curry pan toward the end of cooking.

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Fresh chillis also freeze really well whole, stick them in a tupperware tub and just add them to a pan of something you want to extra spice in later!