Pickled pepper

A pickled pepper is a Capsicum pepper preserved by pickling, which usually involves submersion in a brine of vinegar and salted water with herbs and spices, often including peppercorns, coriander, dill, and bay leaf.

Common pickled peppers are the banana pepper, the friggitelli, the Cubanelle, the bell pepper, sweet and hot cherry peppers, the Hungarian wax pepper, the Greek pepper, the serrano pepper, and the jalapeño. They are often found in supermarkets alongside pickled cucumbers.

Pickled sliced jalapeños are also used frequently for topping nachos and other Mexican dishes. These peppers are a common ingredient used by sandwich shops such as Quiznos, Subway, and Wawa. Pickled peppers are found throughout the world, such as the Italian peperoncini sott'aceto and Indonesia's pickled bird's eye chili, besides the already-mentioned American and Latin American usages.

The flavored brine of hot yellow peppers is commonly used as a condiment in Southern cooking in the United States.

Information

To achieve the best results and minimize the risk of botulism, only fresh blemish-free peppers should be used and vinegar with acidity of at least 5%; reducing the acidic taste can be achieved by adding sugar. While larger peppers are sliced up to be pickled, smaller peppers are often placed into the pickling solution whole; however, they still require slits so that the vinegar can penetrate the pepper. To avoid botulism it is recommended that pickled pepper products be processed in boiling water if they are to be stored at room temperature; improperly processed peppers led to the largest outbreak of botulism in U.S. history.