Yellow Peppers Jam Recipe (Marmellata di Peperoni Gialli)

A couple years ago, we would buy small bottles of yellow pepper jam from the supermarket to have it together with pecorino cheese as an appetizer.  It was beautiful combination and never in the world would I ever thought about putting the two together.  We were so addicted to it and only stopped because we went on a diet.

We are still watching what we eat but this past Sunday’s lunch, where we had ricotta al forno and a jam of tropea onions, brought back memories of the yellow pepper jam.  I had planned on making the onion jam but as my husband prefers peppers to onions, I did some research on pepper jam recipes.

While most of the recipes called for several kilos of peppers, I opted to only make a quarter of the recipe. The first batch I made was just too sweet.  Even my husband thinks so which means it is very sweet!  So much so that my husband says it could be any jam and even said it was apricot jam.  How disappointing as I had already reduced the amount of sugar by 20%.

The second time around, I decided to reduce the sugar by more than 30%.  It’s still sweet but not so overwhelming that you couldn’t taste the peppers.  Here is the recipe and instructions adapted from kucinare.it.

Yellow Peppers Jam Recipe

Ingredients
Yellow Peppers – 500 grams (cleaned)
Sugar – 150 grams
Zest of a lemon
Juice of one lemon
A pinch of cinnamon

Instructions

1. Clean the peppers by removing the seeds and the strands.

2. Cut them thinly and put them in a pot together with all the other ingredients.  Mix well and let them rest for an hour.  After an hour, you will see that there is more liquid in the pot.

3.  Cook over low heat for 30 minutes.  Then for another 5-10 minutes, over medium heat to thicken it.  When cooking them over medium heat, constantly stir the mixture.

4. Make sure it doesn’t thicken too much.  I chose to not let  it get to the thickness of marmalade so slightly less dense.

5. Pour the mixture into a tall container and use a hand blender to lightly puree the peppers.  (Note: I first tried to puree the peppers using the hand blender inside the pot but it was spluttering everywhere).

6. If you feel it’s still too watery, pour back into the pot and cook until it reaches the consistency you desire.

7. Serve with cheese.  I served it with ricotta al forno but I wasn’t thrilled with the results of the ricotta al forno.  I am still perfecting the recipe for ricotta al forno and once I am happy, I will share it. 

Alternatively, you can have this yellow pepper marmalade with meat.  The same way you would use cranberry sauce with turkey. If you prefer, you can replace this yellow peppers jam recipe with red peppers.