Dina said:
Can the pickled peppers be left outside the fridge?
I wouldn't, based on your description of what you did.
Dina said:
Should I have boiled the cans?
Yes - you should have steralized the jars first, filled the hot jars with the peppers etc. and covered them with boiling vinegar, then processed for 5-10 minutes in a boiling water canner.
Dina said:
Should I add any powdered spices?
No - use whole spices. Ground spices will make your pickle cloudy.
Dina said:
I wonder if some cloves of garlic and sliced onions would give it some flavor?
Yes - but I probably wouldn't roast them first.
paxpuella said:
I probably didn't do some things right, but wanted to be sure they were safe to eat.
Humm .... to borrow from an old expression, "Close only counts in horseshoes."
If you packed the peppers in brine (salt water) - they would have to have been processed in a pressure canner before they would be safe. If your "brine" was salt and 5% vinegar - the jars should have been filled with the peppers while they (the jars) were still hot, and the vinegar brought to a boil and poured over the peppers while it was hot - and the other stuff you need to do (proper headspace, removing trapped air bubbles, wiping off the jar mouth, wiping the gasket on the hot lid dry, etc.)
It sounds like you were on the right track when you boiled them some more after filling ... but upside down is
NOT the way to do it. Boiling the jars causes the air to expand and some escapes - as the jars cool the air condenses and shrinks - forming a vacuum. Boiling them upside down - the expansion of the air will force liquid out of the jars (instead of air) - which can result in either a failure to form a proper vacuum or greatly increase the chance for seal failure.
You may have seen the upside down jar process used by your Mom or Grandma when you were younger. Normally, it was used for jam, marmalade, jelly when using steralized (boiled) jars. You would remove the steralized jar, fill it with hot jam, lid it and invert for about 10-minutes, then turn right-side-up to finish cooling - they were not boiled again after filling. This technique appears to have been abandoned in "up-to-date" cookbooks somewhere between 1980-1995.
INFORMATION RESOURCES:
The
Kerr & Mason Homecanning website (the folks who make the canning jars and other products) is worth visiting for good basic canning information. They also offer what I think should be the first book any new aspiring home canner should aquire - the
Ball Blue Book of Preserving - $4.95. You can find the "Blue Book" from other canning websites, and book sellers, but this is the best price I've seen.
Perhaps the best and most informative website is the
National Center for Home Food Preservation. Everything is based on the latest research and funded by the USDA. They even offer a free, self-paced, online study course for those wanting to learn more about home canning and preservation called
Preserving Food at Home.
For some pepper recipes, from brined to fermented to pickled, you might check out the recipes at
Pepperfoot.