Sauces & Condiments

Quick and Tasty Caribbean Pepper Pickle.

Chris De La Rosa
Chris De La Rosa
Storyteller · Award-Winning Author · TV Personality & Caribbean Culinary Curator.
Quick and Tasty Caribbean Pepper Pickle.

Here’s yet another spicy pickle to serve as a side to your fav curry dishes or as in my case, with Chicken Pelau. Using freshly harvested hot peppers from my garden as the growing season comes to an end, it was an excellent use of the final produce for 2024. While these pickled peppers can be used immediately, the remainder will keep for months in the fridge and warm me up during those cold winter nights in Canada.

2 Habanero Peppers (sliced thin)
2 Scotch Bonnet peppers (sliced thin)
1 cup Wiri Wiri peppers (rough chopped)
10-15 Bird’s Eye peppers (sliced)
1 medium onion (sliced thin)
5 cloves garlic (smashed)
1 inch Bitter Melon (sliced thin)
3/4 teaspoon sea salt
4 lemons (juice)

Notes! It’s important that you wear gloves and wash your hands immediately after with soap and water when handling such hot peppers. May I suggest that you follow along with the video below as much more about the recipe is discussed there. Especially which variety of peppers you may use.

Wash and prep everything.

In a bowl, place the peppers, garlic and bitter melon (we say Carilie in the Caribbean).

Spread the thinly sliced onion on the top, then sprinkle on the salt. As explained in the video, this will take away some of the direct rawness of the onion. You may let it sit like this for 20 minutes or proceed immediately.

Pour the lemon juice over everything and give it a good mix. You may use lime juice or white vinegar if you don’t have lemon juice. Please try to use freshly squeezed juice and not the bottle stuff for best results.

You may use this immediately and store the remainder in a sealed glass jar in the fridge for a few months. Keep in mind that the acid from the citrus will continue to soften everything as it age and some of the ‘heat’ will be lost during that time. Treat it as you would any spicy condiment and NOT as a dish itself.

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