Quantities in Chilli Jam

Our answer

Nigella's Chilli Jam recipe (from Christmas and on the Nigella website) uses 150g long red chilli peppers. These are sometimes known as Dutch chillies and are a low to medium heat chilli (2,500 to 8,000 Scoville heat units). 150g is about 8 chillies so the quantity is not excessively large. The bright red colour of the jam is bolstered by 150g of red (bell/sweet) peppers, but these do not add any heat.

The amount of sugar used is 1kg, along with 600ml cider vinegar, so the quantities of sweet and hot peppers do not seem to be that large as a proportion of the other ingredients and the flecks of peppers can be seen in suspended in the jam, rather than being a thick mass. It is possible to use liquid pectin rather than jam sugar or powdered pectin, but please follow the instructions on the packaging in terms of quantity and use and bear in mind that there is no pectin at all in the jam ingredients themselves.