Fire Balls

Fire balls are pickled green cherry tomatoes packed into jars with hot red peppers, garlic, celery, and fresh dill. The name says it all. That whole hot pepper in each jar infuses the brine with steady heat that builds over weeks of storage.

Green cherry tomatoes are the right choice here, not ripe red ones. Green tomatoes are firmer and hold their shape through the boiling water bath processing. Ripe tomatoes would turn to mush in the hot brine and give you a jar of spicy tomato soup instead of crisp, pickled bites.

The brine is a straightforward mix of water, pickling salt, and white vinegar in a ratio that keeps the acidity high enough for safe water bath canning. Pickling salt dissolves cleanly without the anti-caking agents in regular table salt, which would cloud the brine.

Pro Tips

• Pack the jars tightly with tomatoes. They shrink slightly during processing and loose packing means floating tomatoes with too much headspace.
• Use pickling salt, not table salt or kosher salt. Table salt clouds the brine, and kosher salt measures differently by volume.
• Leave exactly ½ inch of headspace. Too much and the seal may fail. Too little and the brine can bubble over and prevent a proper seal.
• Wait at least 2-3 weeks before opening. The heat from the peppers and the dill flavor need time to fully permeate the tomatoes.

Variations

• Add a teaspoon of mustard seed to each jar for a more complex, slightly sharp pickle flavor.
• Use habanero or serrano peppers instead of generic hot red peppers for a more specific, intense heat profile.
• Toss in a few whole peppercorns and a bay leaf per jar for a more layered, aromatic brine.