Apple Cranberry Rib Candy
Cranberries!
My suggestion to you is to order all three flavors and let your guests decide which one they like best. Remember, at Texas Pepper Jelly, whenever you order a multi-pack of any of our products, YOU choose the flavors, not us!
Order a 3-pack – one of each! – of our newest cranberry Rib Candies!
Order now, so you’ll get your Cranberry Rib Candies in time for Thanksgiving.
If you live where it’s warm all year long, you won’t need to know how to winterize your grill. However, if you live where it’s starting to get pretty cold right about now, please continue reading because this post can mean the difference between having to buy a new grill every spring and having your old grill look and act like a new grill every spring! This post will save you some serious money, my friends. Take good care of your grill and your grill will take good care of you!
First of all, clean your grill thoroughly, and I don’t mean just the insides. Yes, the actual grates are probably the most important part, but if you don’t take care of ALL of your unit, you’ll be placing those grates on a bed of coals and hoping your burgers and steaks don’t slide off due to the imbalance.
Whether you’ve got a gas grill or a charcoal grill, heat it up one last time to loosen the “crud.” While it’s still warm in there, take a wire brush and CAREFULLY (wear a hot pad glove!) scrub off all the clinging crud. Follow this treatment with a sponge and some soapy water. Rinse thoroughly with the hose. THOROUGHLY. You need to use the hose and not just buckets of clear water because the water pressure of the hose helps remove the last traces of clinging crud.
If you feel you need to use abrasives on the grill itself, be careful not to remove the paint along with the built-up crud.
If you’ve got a gas grill, be sure the gas is shut off. Unfasten the burners and carefully slide the gas tubes off the lines and lift out the unit.
Coat the burners, grates, and all metal parts with cooking oil; this will help prevent moisture from touching the metal and is a rust deterrent. Wrap the burner units and/or grates in plastic bags to keep the bugs from nesting for the winter; this is a more common problem than you might think and is a common reason your first springtime grilling venture sometimes meets with a blockage. BUG EGGS. Wrap well so the bugs can’t take up a winter home in your grill.
If you’re storing your grill outside, be sure it’s well covered. If you’re bringing the grill inside, disconnect the tank. You don’t want a small leak to cause a big explosion.
While you’re checking for insect nests and prepping for winter, check all hoses and connections for signs of old age – cracks, brittle spots, etc. These will only worsen
in the cold weather.
Whatever you do, don’t leave your grill, whatever kind it may be, out in the winter snow and ice unprotected unless you want to deal with a pile of rust and animal nests in the spring.
Treat your grill well, and it will serve you for many years. Don’t treat your grill right, and you’ll be buying a new one every spring.
Autumn is definitely here – it’s here with a vengeance in some areas. We didn’t exactly have snow for Halloween, but we had sleet. And it was COLD – all the little Elsas that came to the door were upset that their pretty dresses had to be covered with a coat! Let it snow, indeed, girls. Let it GO.
When the weather turns colder, it’s time for baked apples. Apples are fall’s representative fruit, you know. Apples eaten out of hand are awesome, but when it’s cold – and WET, there’s just something about a simple, delicious baked apple.
I like to keep things as simple as possible, and this particular recipe for baked apples is about as simple as any recipe could possibly be. It’s also my family’s favorite baked apple recipe, so there you are: proof that more often than we could ever guess, the simple things are the best.
Yum!
Ingredients:
Apples, one for each person at the table. Two if they’re big eaters. Let’s say, six apples. I use Granny Smith.
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 cup Apple Habanero Pepper Jelly
Apple Habanero Pepper Jelly
Raisins
Pecan halves
What to do:
Preheat your oven to 375.
Core the apples but do not peel them.
In a mixing bowl, mix together the brown sugar, pepper jelly, and raisins. Fill each apple center with the mixture.
Top with a pecan half.
Place the filled apples on a cookie sheet and bake for about a half hour. The pepper jelly mixture will probably bubble over the top of the apple and spread down the sides. This is what you want to happen.
Let them cool.
Serve and eat. We like them best when they’re still warm. My husband and son demand ice cream with baked apples. It seems like a reasonable request.
It’s almost Halloween, which means we’re just heading into official Holiday Season, and Holiday Season means it’s time to start laying in supplies for all those holiday meals, reunions, gatherings, and parties!
Mixed Case of Pepper Jelly – You choose the flavors!
Aaaaand, what’s any meal, reunion, gathering, or party without plenty of Texas Pepper Jelly products! Our pepper jellies, BBQ sauce, Rib Candies, etc, don’t just improve any and every meal – they MAKE those meals, that’s what!
Oh, you need a full gallon of Craig’s BBQ Sauce if you’re having PEOPLE over. One regular bottle just won’t cut it.
When you order an assortment of Texas Pepper Jelly products, you don’t get a set amount of this flavor and a set amount of that flavor, carved in stone. When you order an assortment of Texas Pepper Jelly products, YOU choose which flavors you want, and how many of each. Order one of one flavor and five of another. All one flavor. Two of each. One of each. You’re the boss of your flavor selection at Texas Pepper Jelly!
Texas Rib Candy assortment. YOU pick the flavors!
We here at Texas Pepper Jelly love the holidays. Grilling season might be over in some areas of the country because of the weather, but if you’re still able to cook outdoors, we’ve got the products you need. And if you’ll be doing most of your holiday cooking indoors because of weather of a different sort, Texas Pepper Jelly products are just as delicious when used indoors in the kitchen as they are when used outdoors on a grill!
Now, let’s you and me get ourselves over to the Texas Pepper Jelly website and do some holiday ordering!
As we begin to head into holiday season, here are some of our readers’ favorite Texas Pepper Jelly recipes!
1. Texas Pepper Jelly’s famous Pineapple Habanero Potato Salad is that perfect picnic side dish! The combination of spicy habanero, sweet pineapple, sour dill pickles, and the various spiciness of the peppers turns a simple potato dish into both indoor and outdoor perfection! Get the recipe here: http://tpjbbqblog.com/pineapple-habanero-potato-salad/
2. Picnics, cookouts, and in-house meals all need a good dessert to round them out, and Texas Pepper Jelly’s Texas-Style Spicy Peach Cobbler is one of the easiest and tastiest desserts out there! You can make our peach cobbler even in the dead of winter, because it’s made in your crock-pot! http://tpjbbqblog.com/texas-style-spicy-peach-cobbler/
3. So many people are on low-carb diets these days, and, let’s face it, low-carb diets are a very healthy way to eat. Contrary to what many of you might think, though, you don’t have to settle for a bland diet just because you’re on a low-carb diet! Texas Pepper Jelly has some good ideas to SPICE UP your suppers! http://tpjbbqblog.com/low-carb-diet-texas-pepper-jelly-makes-it-delicious/
4. With the holidays approaching, you’ll be wondering what kind of gift to give your child’s teacher. Well, as teacher myself, I can tell you up front that your child’s teacher already has enough ornaments, candles, and mugs. What I would want – so I assume your child’s teacher’s wants might be similar – are things I might not buy for myself. Actually, one of our best-sellers is the Star Assortment of Pepper Jellies! http://texaspepperjelly.com/pepper-jelly/mixed-case-of-jelly/
5. Getting back to the cookout basics, there’s nothing that can beat Texas Pepper Jelly’s Rib Candy or Craig’s BBQ Sauce. Nothing can come even close. The most basic of cookouts – the burger and hot dogs variety – are turned into a feast fit for a king with just a little Rib Candy and/or Craig’s BBQ Sauce. Guaranteed. http://tpjbbqblog.com/monday-munchies-rib-candy-cookout/
These are just a few of our readers’ favorite recipes. We’ll post some more real soon! In the meantime, don’t put your grills away yet – there will be plenty more beautiful autumn days left for cookout outdoors! And even when the snow is piled high and your back yard are inaccessible, Texas Pepper Jelly products are great for your kitchen, too!
Football season means awesome couch quarterback/tailgate/fall cookout food, and all of it is awesome!
For my husband and son, pulled pork is the staple food of football, and depending on the weather, I’ve made it in the crockpot, on an outdoor spit, in the oven, and on the stovetop. This weekend, I used both slow cooker and backyard grill.
I worked all day, so before I left on Friday morning, I put a huge pork loin in the crockpot, turned it on “low,” and went to work. Nine hours later, I took the loin out of the crockpot (it was so tender it fell apart!) and put it in the refrigerator.
Saturday morning, my husband fired up the grill and I got out our cast iron wok. I put the flaky-tender loin in the wok and pulled it apart. I added four large sliced onions and a bottle of Craig’s BBQ Sauce. (It’s the BBQ sauce that sealed the deal with my family!) I let the shredded pork sizzle and watched the flavors blend and our neighbor came to the fence to tell me that her family was insisting SHE make BBQ pork because the aroma was turning them all into drooling crazies. (Her words!)
Add to this feast of wonderful BBQ pulled pork was Texas Pepper Jelly’s own spicy baked beans, cole slaw, and 
potato salad. (You can find recipes for them all right here on the Texas Pepper Jelly blog!) I made enough of everything to feed a small nation for several days, but wasn’t really surprised when my crew cleaned up every bite in two nights.
Be sure you’ve got enough Craig’s BBQ Sauce on hand; people will want to add more to their sandwiches. I’ve learned that I can never have too much of it in the pantry, because however much I have, they will use up.
The main dish for your football-watching crew will be the pulled pork, of course, which is why I buy a loin that weights up to ten pounds. You won’t have too much – you’ll never have too much.
Sometimes I add shredded green and red peppers, but this year I just added lots and lots of fresh onions and the BBQ sauce, and saved the peppers for the potato salad and slaw.
Whenever I add onions and peppers to a meal, I count it as a vegetable. Because, you know, they ARE vegetables.
I have an outdoor wok and an indoor wok. My outdoor wok is really, really old; it was my grandmother’s, and it weighs more than ten pounds. It was seasoned when I got it, but I keep up with that because unless a cast iron pan’s seasoning is kept up, you’ll lose it. An unseasoned cast iron pan is pretty much useless; your food will stick to the pan so thoroughly it’s like the food and the iron have bonded. Which they actually have. But I digress.
In the fall, a few weeks after Labor Day, we like to get out the iron wok and start some serious stir-frying in the back yard. We’re literally drowning in fresh vegetables right now, and stir-frying them up is a delicious and nutritious and really easy way to use them up.
We never use the indoor wok outside on the grill; it’s for the stovetop only. Likewise, we never bring the indoor wok outside. These two pans are not interchangeable!
We use a charcoal grill, but it doesn’t matter. Use what you’ve got and prefer. Set the seasoned cast iron wok on your grill – ON it, not in it. Add about a tablespoon of canola oil. No more than that, as food cooked in a cast iron pot retains and uses its own juices more than with a conventional pan or pot. Throw in your cut-up chicken, pork, beef, lamb, or whatever kind of raw meat you’re using. Don’t laugh, but my husband absolutely loves to use scallops in his stir-fry, so that’s what we usually have. Let the meat get almost done, and start dumping in your cut-up vegetables.
Use any type and combination of vegetables that your family likes best. Broccoli, cauliflower, onions, peppers, squashes, sugar snap peas, tomatoes, bean sprouts, mushrooms, green beans, carrots, corn. . . . just send the kids out to the garden and throw in everything they bring back!
Um, wash everything first. You don’t want to fry up any bugs, worms, slugs, or noticeable dirt. Pat dry or you’ll get some serious and possibly dangerous reactions with the hot oil. Water and oil don’t mix. They don’t even like each other, and they’ll take it out on you.
Never stop stirring your mixture. When the vegetables are done but still fairly crisp, remove them from the wok and put them in a paper towel-lined bowl.
My husband always wants brown rice with this dish.
We like to use chopsticks, but you can use forks if you want. Set out the pepper jellies – everybody here likes his/her own and no two people ever want the same flavor.
If it’s just my husband and me, we put finely chopped pineapple in with the veggies and use Pineapple Habanero pepper jelly with it.
During peach season, we like to grill some halved fresh peaches for dessert. For this family, autumn grilling means getting out the cast iron wok, re-seasoning it, and filling it with our garden bounty.
Next weekend, we’ll take some steaks out of the freezer. Weekend after that, we’ll probably fire up the iron wok again. We’ll alternate like this until it gets too cold to stand outside. For my husband and his love of grilling and Texas Pepper Jelly products, that’s about ten degrees, so we’ve got some time yet.
It’s Labor Day Weekend, cookout fans! This is one of the BIG ONES, so you’ll want your cookout to be extra special.
Summer’s almost over, so let’s make sure it goes out with a backyard bang. Gather up all the fresh summer vegetables you can, and let’s make this Labor Day cookout a gala success.
Let’s face it – a cookout is a kind of picnic, and what picnic is complete without baked beans and corn on the cob?
You can find our recipe for baked beans right here on the blog, but this is how to turn corn-on-the-cob into a gourmet treat!
Ingredients:
For ten people:
20 ears of sweet corn in the husk
butter
salt
Texas Pepper Jelly, any or many flavors (I use a variety!)
What to do:
Peel back the husks but do not remove. Remove the silks. Spread butter all over the corn and then spread pepper jelly all over the buttered corn. Bring the husks back up over the corn; you might have to secure with a toothpick. Put the corn on the grill AFTER the meat is done – corn doesn’t take very long. I usually have a teenager roll the corn around on the grill for about ten minutes; it has to be turned constantly and rolling is the easiest (and most fun!) way to get ‘er done.
Put the grilled corn on a platter and step back. 
Corn cools down quickly; that’s why it should be one of the last items grilled. Be sure to put out all your Texas Pepper Jelly flavors so people can brush it on pretty much everything you’ve grilled. Oh, and our Texas Rib Candies work well with vegetables as well as with any kind of meat, too. My cookout advice is always to set out every Texas Pepper Jelly product you have in the house for every cookout. People will eat it up. Literally.
Whenever there’s talk of grilling or broiling, there’s always talk of beef, pork, lamp, and every possible manifestation of these basic meats. However, those who grill a lot know that fish are delicious grilled or broiled, too.
Right now, my husband is on a VERY strict diet of which grilled or broiled fish is the main component. He’s been on this diet for five weeks now and isn’t tired of it yet, mainly because I’ve used so many different Texas Pepper Jelly products and he says it’s like a completely new and different dish every time!
The weather here has been so intensely humid and muggy (and buggy!) that I’ve been using the broiler in my kitchen stove a lot, rather than standing out in the heat making more heat. My husband’s favorite types of fish are salmon and cod, and it’s absolutely amazing how different Texas Pepper Jelly products can turn a slab of fish into a gourmet dish!
So far, we’ve gone through almost all the pepper jelly flavors and two Rib Candy jars. (Just because it says “rib” or “chicken” on the bottle, that doesn’t mean you’re limited in any way!)
Tomorrow, he’s having broiled salmon marinated in Texas Bird Bath Peach Mango Habanero. 
I’ll brush the Bird Bath all over each salmon filet, sprinkle them with some chopped green onion, and put them under the broiler. Served with mixed broccoli, cauliflower, and sugar snap peas, a tossed salad, and some buttered garlic mushrooms, it’ll be a feast fit for a king. A heart-healthy, low-carb feast. So easy, and thanks to Texas Pepper Jelly products, so delicious, he doesn’t even remember that it’s a limited, restricted diet that’s super good for him.
Hey y’all, your Labor Day cookout is coming up fast, and before you think about throwing your beef, pork, lamb, fish, etc, on your grill, you need to think about knives.
Knives.
No cookout master can succeed without really good knives. Your knives need to be razor-sharp, heavy-duty, durable, and able to let you maintain a good grip even when your fingers get covered with sauces and other slippery things.
Texas Pepper Jelly has far more than food items, you know. We also have the utility items you need, and this knife set is a great deal! These knives are perfect for your back yard cookout, your in-house Sunday dinner preparation, your on-the-road competitions, and slicing up the watermelon and chocolate cake for dessert. Versatile, easy to clean, and did I mention RAZOR SHARP knives that will enhance the grilling experience for all.
With these knives, you’ll be able to prep the meats and other foods faster and more efficiently. With these knives, you can slice up the veggies for skewers or saucepan. With these knives, you can cut up lettuce and other raw veggies for salad. With these knives you can slice fruit for snacking, pie-making or any other dish you need sliced fruit for. These knives are dishwasher safe and come clean easily.
One thing: these knives are SHARP. Keep them away from small children!
One more thing: your foods will be ready for the grill or stove a lot faster, so be sure to tell your guests to get their hands washed and those napkins tucked in their shirts, because dinner will be ready soon!
Messermeister knives – quality knives offered by Texas Pepper Jelly. Order one, or a few, or a set, when you order your pepper jellies, rubs, grilling sauces, and other fantastic products available on our website.
Delivery is fast, but order soon. Labor Day is September 1st, and your cookout will probably be that previous weekend!
