Making Jalapeno Pepper Infused Olive Oil

The freeze hit the garden hard and the pepper plants were done.  I picked all of the peppers and sliced up everything but the jalapenos and put them in the freezer for cooking later.  I wanted to try something different with some of the jalapenos.

The last of the jalapenos for 2013

I decided to make Jalapeno infused olive oil.  I've heard that it is great for dipping bread in as a snack and great for drizzling over popcorn.  Interesting!  The first thing you do is get some nice, firm jalapenos.

Jalapenos

Slice up the peppers

Chopping them up

I then use a meat tenderizer to bruise up the chopped jalapenos in order to release more oils that reside in the peppers.

Bruising the peppers

Now we add enough olive oil in a small pot to cover the chopped peppers.

We heat the oil to 180 degrees.  I had a thermometer that I used to tell me when it was hot enough.  Once hot enough, I removed it from the burner and let the oil/pepper mixture cool.

Then we just bottle it, but we want to strain out the peppers and any pepper residue.  I place a coffee filter in a sieve and pour the oil into it.  The oil slowly drips through the filter.

Filtering out the peppers

From a bottom shot, you can see that the oil is clear so the filter is doing its job.  

After leaving the oil to drip overnight, we had a half pint jar of Jalapeno Infused Olive Oil.  I'll store it in the refrigerator until we are ready to try it.  I can't wait.

Jalapeno infused Olive Oil

This is the last of the jalapeno peppers until the Spring crop of 2014.