There are many, many recipes for chilli-based condiments and part of the fun is experimenting with them, or even combining recipes. One of the biggest challenges is knowing how hot your chillis are, and how many to include. My attitude is – if the jam turns out hot, simply use less of it! A chilli jam that isn’t hot is just….jam. This recipe uses liquid pectin. Alternatively you could use jam-making sugar which includes pectin.

  • 4 long (10-15cm) red chillis (or as many shorter ones make up the equivilent) seeds removed.
  • 2 red capsicum peppers, seeds and stalk removed.
  • 300ml cider or wine vinegar

Pulse in a food processer until finely chopped. Put the mix into a stainless steel saucepan and add

  • 800g white (granulated) sugar
  • 3 tbs lemon juice

Stir well to dissolve the sugur then boil for ten minutes. Keep stirring gently so it doesn’t catch and burn. It will start to get foamy and rise up so you will need to tweak the heat. Add

  • 175ml liquid pectin

Mix in and boil again, until it reaches setting point which is 105C. If there is foam on the surface, scrape this off with a spoon. Test for setting by putting a litle jam on a very cold plate. If the jam sets, you can put it in clean, sterilised jam jars.

If after all that the jam hasn’t set when it cools, don’t get depressed. Firstly wait another 24 hours because sometimes it can be slow to set. If it is still too runny, you can tip the jars back into a saucepan and heat up again, making sure it reaches 105C. If it still doesn’t set, you’ll have to pretend you made chilli sauce.