by
Aug 24. 2024
Chilli Jam
Recipe: Spicy, sweet & tangy chilli jam
Makes approx 2 jars (300g x 2)
Preparation time 10 minutes
Cooking time less than 50 minutes
Ingredients 1 apple (120g)/ spicy red chilli (200g)/ 1 onion (250g)/ 4 garlic cloves/ 2cm ginger/ 60ml apple cider vinegar/ 1tsp salt (5 ml)/ 200g brown sugar/ 40ml water
1 Trim, halve and de-seed the red chillies. Cut the apple, red chillies and onion into the right size for a food processor.
2 Put the apple, red chillies, onion, garlic, ginger, water and apple cider vinegar in the food processor and pulse until chopped and not too small. If you want some texture, you can put just the chillies in the machine and chop the apple and other vegetables with a knife. (I sometimes grate the apple with a cheese grater.)
3 Tip all the ingredients into a large heavy-based pan and bring it to the boil over a medium heat, stirring frequently, then reduce the heat to simmer for about 30 ~ 40 minutes until thick. If it thickens too quickly, you can add 20 ~ 30 ml more water. (Adjust the amount of water depending on the moisture level of the fruit or vegetables and boil until it becomes thick like fruit jam.)
4 Transfer the chilli jam into 2 sterilised jars while it is still hot. Seal the jars and leave to cool, then add labels (please refer to my raspberry jam recipe for information about jar sterilisation).
Chilli jam and chutney with cheese on crackersWhen I thought about jam in the past, I thought it should be sweet and fruity. Moreover, since we have gochujang (chilli paste) in Korea, when I heard the name ‘chilli jam’, I had even more difficulty guessing what it was. Chilli jam, what exactly is it? Some sources suggest chilli jam may have derived from Thailand’s sweet and spicy chilli paste called nam prik pao, which contains dried shrimp and fish sauce. Popular chilli jam in the UK is sweeter than the classic version. British chilli jam is usually made from Scotch bonnet chilli which is super spicy but with a different flavour to Korean chilli.
Chilli jam goes well with simple western food and makes dishes you already know more attractive. It is ideally suited for foods that can be boring or greasy, such as fried chicken, cheese, bacon and bolognese. If you put cheese on a cracker and add a little bit of chilli jam, it’s easy to get addicted to the taste. It's really delicious in a sandwich with bacon or chicken and cheese. I also use it mixed with gochujang in spicy dishes such as tteokbokki, dak-bokkeum-tang, bibimbap etc. Once you start using it, it's hard to stop... Elvis Presley’s song comes to mind, ‘We're caught in a trap!’
Chillies are one of my garden’s main summer crops. I wanted to cook British food with the chillies I had grown, however, there aren’t any spicy dishes that are traditional to the UK. Still, I have to pick all of the chillies when the season comes, so I needed to find a way to utilise all of the crop. When I was considering it, I searched on the internet and I found Jamie Oliver’s recipe easily. His recipes give confidence to everyone, they make you believe you can cook because the recipes are very simple and easy. I made chilli jam using his recipe once, then made it again with my own changes and turned it into my recipe. Having grown up Korea and being used to gochujang I wanted to give it a richer flavour.^^ In my recipe, I added more sweet fruits and vegetables and reduced the sugar, so it may not keep for a long time. The taste is guaranteed to be delicious because of the natural sweetness and flavour of the ingredients. Depending on how spicy the chillies, you may need to adjust the quantity of the apple and onion by tasting the mixture as you are cooking the chilli jam. Another option is to use tomatoes instead of the apple. This gives the chilli jam a flavour similar to arrabbiatta sauce.
Chilli jam might be unfamiliar, so I'll introduce a few simple recipes using it.
Sandwiches with Chilli Jam
Serves 1
Preparation time 10 minutes
Ingredients chilli jam/ 2 slices of bread/ butter spread/ favourite cheese/ 1 slice of lettuce/ a thin piece of fried chicken or ham
1 Spread butter on the sliced bread, cut the cheese into 2~3 mm slices and put on the bread.
2 Spread chilli jam on the cheese and lay the meat on top. (It will be delicious even if you skip the meat.) I like to use a small piece of fried chicken in the sandwich.
3 Put the washed and dried lettuce on top and cover with the other slice of bread.
I made a version of my sandwich with a piece of frozen haddock fillet, which I cooked in the airfryer and added some thousand island dressing instead of the cheese. Ah…I really like this! I ate a bite before remembering to take the photo! TT
Cheese Platter with Chilli Jam
Serves Prepare as much as you want
Preparation time 10 minutes
Ingredients chilli jam/ chutney or fruit jam/ cheeses/ different types of cooked meat/ crackers/ olives, nuts or fruits
1 Place the cheese, meat and crackers on a plate or board. Arrange some bigger items first (cheese or items in bowls) and then add the other things.
Cheese: Choose 2 to 3 different types as you like. I suggest a combination of hard and soft cheese (I prefer cheddar or Double Gloucester for hard cheese, brie for soft cheese).
Meat: choose a few items that go well with cheese such as ham, chorizo, salami, sausage etc. You can skip the meat if you don’t want it.
Crackers: prepare different hardness or shaped crackers, it also goes well with crostini (little toasts).
2 Place the remaining fruit, olives or nuts around the rest of the plate.
3 Place chilli jam in a little bowl on the plate. If you have chutney or fruit jam, you can also put them on the plate.
Chilli jam and cheese are a fantastic pairing. I usually prepare a cheese platter without meat, which is how it is normally served as an after dinner dish. It is good to have for lunch as a simple snack but it’s even better with wine at home. Shiraz seems to be a good wine to pair with chilli jam.
Tteokbokki with Chilli Jam
Serves 1
Preparation time 10 minutes
Ingredients 160g tteokguk tteok/ 1 tbsp gochujang (15ml)/ 2 tbsp chilli jam (15ml)/ 1 tbsp soybean sauce (15ml)/ 150 ml water/ 1~2 spring onion/ a handful of sliced cabbage/ 40g grated cheese (cheddar or mozzarella)/ a sheet of eomuk (fried fish paste; a dish made by mashing fish flesh, kneading the paste with salt, flour, etc. and cooking it)
1 Make the sauce: mix the water, gochujang, chilli jam and soybean sauce in a pan over medium heat.
2 Cut the spring onions and eomuk into bite-size pieces and add them to the pan with tteok, mix with the sauce, and cook over a high heat.
3 Reduce the heat when the sauce has thickened, finally top with a layer of grated cheese. When the cheese has melted, turn off the heat.
I wanted to enjoy a picnic in my garden but it was a seriously hot day, so I prepared some cold drinks with ice cubes. However, it was so hot, I was left with some warm drinks instead. The heatwave which melts everything continues…
If you look for Jamie Oliver’s chilli jam recipe, you can see Jamie’s kimchi recipe as a linked dish - I think it’s because of the chilli in it. I was interested to see Korean food in the British chef’s recipes.
Many people are very interested in various Korean content, such as TV series, film, pop etc. nowadays. I think Korean food is no exception. Even though I’m living in the countryside in the UK, I can easily find gochujang, bulgogi sauce, Korean ramyeon and so on at the supermarket near my house. Interest in kimchi has increased so much that they also sell kimchi paste - I wonder what people will cook with the kimchi paste because I think it is not very suitable for typical UK food. ^^ Anyway, I can feel the interest in Korean food even in local supermarkets, this is one of the big changes that has happened whilst I have been living in the UK.
In the past, there was only Indian, Chinese and Japanese food in the Asian food sections of the supermarket I use, but nowadays, there is an increase in Korean items. There are 63 recipes that come up when you search for the keyword ‘Korean’ on the BBC food website, and there are also many recipes with the ‘Korean’ keyword on Jamie Oliver’s recipes website which I like. My parents-in-law seem to like Korean food too; last visit, they asked for some white kimchi I made. I feel the interest has definitely increased for Korean food and I can feel this surrounding me everyday in life.
As interest in Korea has increased, it has become easier to hear bad news about Korea. I went to church last year and one of the people there was very nice to me when she found out I am from Korea. She told me that her daughter was going to join the World Scout Jamboree in the summer in Korea, so her daughter had been saving money for the participation fee for over 3 years. She was very curious and looking forward to her trip to Korea. ㅠㅅㅠ What would have been the first image of Korea that those children conveyed to their friends when they returned home? Many Korean news stories are reported in the UK press and unfortunately as is well-known, the World Scout Jamboree was a failure. I was so upset.
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My recipes are published in both Korean and English. Korean speakers who are interested in British food or writing in English, or English speakers who are interested in the Korean language, please check the contents list and choose the version you prefer.
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