Peppers add heat to fruit jellies, jams

Spanishchef.net recommends these products

Peppers add heat to fruit jellies, jams

If you think the flavors of, say, a wild Missouri blackberry and a hot jalapeno pepper or, perhaps, a sweet Georgia peach and an even hotter habanero peppers don’t go together, Melissa Spoon will dispute your contention.

She has the customers and their tastebuds — and their dollars — to prove it.
“I do a sweet and savory jelly combination,” said Spoon, who sells her products at the Saturday morning farmers market held at Al West Nissan.

The sweetness comes from fruits, particularly berries, and the savory stimulation comes primarily from peppers, though she also uses ginger and cloves, too.

“It’s been a lot of fun,” said Spoon. “It’s interesting to see how many people like the peppers.”

She uses jalapenos and habanero peppers, which should be enough savoriness for anyone and everyone, but some people are looking for even more heat.

“Some people say ‘that’s not hot enough,’” Spoon said. “I’ve given out samples and that’s what I hear: ‘that’s not hot enough.’”

Her pepper jelly avocation started when she lost a job.

“I had extra time,” she said. Spoon and her husband, Jeff, live on a small farm outside Rolla and there are wild blackberries on the property. With that extra time, she went out and picked blackberries. “I got several gallons,” she said.

A friend suggested she and Spoon should get together and make blackberry jelly. That friend liked to add jalapeno peppers to the jelly, so Spoon did the same.

The jelly was delicious and plentiful, so Spoon took some to the Big Lots farmers market (now defunct) and received a rousing reception.

“It’s been surprising to find out how many people enjoy pepper jelly and have for years,” she said.

Those people have suggested interesting flavor combinations, which Spoon has eagerly tried.

“I like to do a lot with wild berries, especially local berries, a lot of them hand-picked,” she said.

The jellies are good for more than just spreading on bread, she said.
“A lot you can use to cook with other dishes,” she said. “Wild plum jalapeno peppers are good on chicken. Peach habanero peppers are good on pork or chicken.”

Wild blackberry jalapeno jelly makes a great topping for ice cream, she said.
“And my husband came up with pineapple habanero jelly melted back down and poured over hot wings,” she said. “So it isn’t just for toast and biscuits.”

It is good on toast and biscuits, too, though. Spoon said she took a jar of wild plum jalapeno to her job as a server at Shoney’s one morning to share with her co-workers. There was a group of hunters eating breakfast and they asked to try it. They apparently liked it.

“I discovered after they left that they had taken the jar with them,” Spoon said.

Spoon said the berry or fruit flavor in her jellies is intense because of the way she makes it.

“I don’t use a ton of water,” she said. “There is a lot of berry flavor.”

Moreover, she believes the use of wild berries also adds flavor intensity.

“Wild plants put so much more of themselves into the berries, and that gives much more flavor,” she said.

Combined with the pepper flavor, the fruit flavor works on the taste buds something like wine does.

“I used to work in fine dining and I’ve done a lot of wine sales, so I’ve been to a lot of tastings,” Spoon said. “Like wine, these jellies have wonderful flavor that starts at the front of the palate and works all the way back,” she said.

So far, Spoon has not started cultivating her own fruits and berries.

“I buy wild plums and some of my blackberries from local sources. I have blackberries and elderberries growing here,” she said. “Elderberry is a natural anti-viral and it makes a wonderful jelly. I get my blueberries from Brandywine Farm.”

She also finds peaches grown nearby.

“I have a hard time finding enough strawberries, though,” she said.

In addition to the pepper jellies, Spoon also makes regular jellies because “not everyone likes a lot of heat,” she said.

This is Concord grape country, and Spoon said, “I didn’t realize how good it could be as a jelly.”

She also makes an apple cinnamon jelly “that tastes like a slice of apple pie.”
“I do fun stuff, too, like Cherry Dr Pepper jelly,” Spoon said.

Making the jelly takes time.

“I spend at least two full days a week making jelly,” Spoon said. “I put a lot of time into this. Right now, I’m sitting down, but between the farm, my job and this, I’m busy.”

She has also invested some money into her jelly-making enterprise.

Through calls to the local health department and subsequently to Jefferson City, she discovered she needed to take a Better Food Processing class. She ended up driving to Stillwater, Okla., to take the class, but now she has the required certification.

She would like to add another line of products.

“I eventually want to do goat cheese,’ she said. The Spoons raise goats, plus quarter horses and cattle on their small farm.

She gets help from her husband on the jelly-making, and selling. They took a big batch to the Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds Spring Planting Festival in April and did well.

“We’ve gone back and forth on what to call ourselves,” she said. “Right now we’ve settled on using the name Spoon Sweet and Savory Delights.”

For those customers who want something hotter than habaneros or jalapeno peppers, there’s hope.

One of her customers recently dropped off a bag of peppers for Spoon at Shoney’s.

“it was a bag of ghost chili peppers,” she said.

There isn’t much hotter than that except maybe the kind in pepper spray used by police.

Perhaps that would be a really savory delight.

If you require a high quality printout of this article, just click on the printer symbol next to ’Share and enjoy’, and we will do the rest.

Get the best website builder available anywhere –SBI! Click here for more information

Return from peppers to Home Page

If you want to increase your site popularity and gain thousands of visitors – check out these sites THEY ARE FREE. Spanishchef more than doubled its ‘New Visitors’ last month simply by signing up to these sites: