I’m happy you’re here, friends, so I can show you how to make these gorgeous little cheese stuffed pickled peppers! Whether you start with your own pickled peppers or even a jar of pickled peppadews, this herbed goat cheese stuffing is one you will not want to miss!
If you’re a goat cheese fan like I am, you may also like my savory goat cheese cheesecake recipe.
For ease of browsing, you can find all my Appetizer recipes in one place. So glad you’re here!
I received one OXO GreenSaver Produce Keeper and two bags of Melissa’s Produce Veggie Sweet Mini Peppers for this test drive. Thank you, OXO and Melissa’s!
What Makes This Recipe So Tasty
First of all, goat cheese is the best. If you’re not a fan, though, you could absolutely substitute cream cheese for the goat cheese.
The sweet pickling liquid definitely brings a “bread and butter pickle” vibe to these peppers. They may even be more kid-friendly. If, that is, you feel like sharing!
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You can use your favorite peppers to pickle: peppadews are sweet and lovely, or go with mini sweet peppers like I did.
Depending on how sweet or spicy you like your peppers, here are a few other options:
- jalapenos
- cherry peppers
- pepperoncini
Another great thing about this recipe is that, to save time, you can start with store-bought pickled peppers, so right away, you can make these easy appetizers in just a few minutes rather than waiting a couple of days for your pickled peppers to get done pickling.
How To Make Them
Making these little pickled peppers happens in two stages:
- brining
- pickling
Once you have your peppers pickled, you make the easy goat cheese stuffing.
Note that the recipe calls for cutting down your peppers and mincing up those trimming to include in the filling. When using smaller, rounder peppers such as cherry or peppadew, you can just mince up 2-3 extra peppers for the filling since they’re smaller.
For the Brine
All you need to brine the pickles is salt and water.
The brine pulls out some of the water from the peppers and makes them a bit firmer so they don’t get mushy when pickled.
For the Pickling Liquid
- Apple cider vinegar: While you can use unfiltered apple cider vinegar with the mother or “regular” apple cider vinegar, you’ll be bringing it to a boil, so you might want to save your vinegar “with the mother” for salad dressings and other no-cook applications.
- Granulated sugar: provides the sweetness. The apple cider vinegar with the sugar yields that sweet-tart-tangy combination that is hard to beat.
- Water: Helps to control the acidity. Straight-up apple cider vinegar would be a bit too puckery for most people, myself included
- Sweet onion: Adds flavor. You could also add some garlic cloves, shallot, or other onion-type ingredients if you’d like, either instead of or in addition to the onion
- Whole peppercorns: provides a little bite and heat without being overpowering. You could also use white peppercorns if you’d rather. Stay away from ground pepper, as it will make the pickling liquid look all muddy and also might be overpowering because ground pepper has more surface area than peppercorns.
- Herbs de Provence: A mixture of dried herbs and spices evocative of the Provence region in France. It usually includes a combination of rosemary, thyme, marjoram, tarragon, and basil and will sometimes include fennel seed, savory, mint and/or lavender.
- Fresh thyme: provides a nice, woodsy green note
- Red pepper flakes: adds a bit of heat. Use to taste, or leave it out if you don’t like that sort of heat
Important Note for Home Canners
I did not develop this recipe with canning in mind.
The pickling liquid, and the pickles themselves, are safe to store and eat at refrigerator temperatures for up to 3 weeks or so.
Do not use this pickle recipe if you are planning on canning your pickles though, because I have not tested it and do not know if the acidity is in the safe range for long-term storage at room temperature.
If you’d like to can your pickled peppers, please check out and use this recipe instead.
For the Goat Cheese Filling
The cheese filling could not be easier to make. In the ingredient list, I’ll also list substitutions, and check out the Q & A for some variation ideas.
- mild, young goat cheese: often comes in 4-ounce logs, and usually available in the specialty cheese section at your local grocery store. Feel free to play with flavored goat cheese as well. Some come rolled in herbs or cracked pepper, so if those speak to you, by all means, grab them up
- salt and pepper: you won’t need pepper if you get cracked pepper goat cheese, but a pinch or two of salt will help to bring out all the flavors and allow the flavor of the filling to stand up to the pickled peppers
- Herbs de Provence: to carry through the flavor in the pickling liquid
- minced pickled peppers: either from pickled peppers that you’ve trimmed down (as I did) or from mincing up an extra 2-3 pickled peppers from your personal stash, either homemade or store-bought. Consider using minced hot pickled peppers in the filling as a foil to the sweet-sour peppers you’ll be stuffing, but it’s your choice
Equipment You Might Need
If you can’t get around to pickling your peppers in the first couple of days after you buy them or pick them, I really do like the OXO GreenSavers line of refrigerator storage bins. In my test, after 11 days–you read that right–the mini peppers I had kept in the GreenSavers were as fresh as the day I put them in there, while the “control group” that I’d put in the vegetable drawer were starting to get soft and a bit wrinkled.
So, if you keep a lot of produce these might be worth the investment.
You can see the difference in the following photo:
Other equipment is actually pretty basic, especially since these cheese stuffed pickled peppers recipe is not written to be “cann-able.”
You’ll want a glass container or containers to place your peppers in for brining and also for the actual pickling–you’ll pour your hot pickling liquid over your prepared peppers.
While I love the idea of glass containers with lids that clamp on, I am usually disappointed that all 4 latches rarely latch, so I am recommending a lower-tech solution: these hinged glass jars are nice and deep to keep your pickles in the pickling solution, they also have clamping lids and a silicone seal.
And since the peppers need to be kept submerged in both the brine and the pickling solution, you might do well to pick up some pickling weights, especially if you’ll be doing a lot of pickling.
Otherwise, if the mouth of your container is wide enough, you can weigh your veggies down with a small saucer or even a teacup that you can fill with beans or other (clean) weights.
Pickled Mini Pepper Q & A
The filling recipe will stuff 12 small peppers such as mini sweets, cherry, or peppadew. The pickling liquid can easily be scaled up as can the goat cheese stuffing, so don’t feel like you are only limited to making 12 stuffed pepper appetizers.
No problem. I used it because I had it and love it. If you do use it, try to pick a blend that does not contain lavender, as it can become overpowering if it steeps for a long time, and especially when heated. Other options would be Italian seasoning or Greek seasoning. Or you could also stick with fresh herbs. I used fresh thyme in this version, but a small sprig of rosemary, or a sprig or two of fresh oregano and/or basil would also work well.
Since this is not a canning recipe, these peppers are not meant for long-term storage at room temperature. Your “refrigerator pickled peppers” will be fine to eat for about 3 weeks.
You can either just pack the filling in with a spoon, which is what I did, or you can use a wide piping tip such as a large open start tip. It does have to be a wider tip so no bits of peppers get stuck when you’re piping.
It’s best to stuff your peppers the day you’ll be serving them. If you have any leftovers (which I doubt), finish them up by the next day. If you try to store the stuffed peppers any longer than that, the pickling juice in the peppers could make the filling a bit runny, and they’ll be harder to eat.
Absolutely. If you prefer not to make your own pickles, feel free to purchase some. Likely candidates are these lovely Sweety Drop peppers (very small), these sweet peppadew peppers, or these sweet cherry peppers. And don’t discount buying some pickled pepperoncini for a spicier version.
No problem. If you’re not a goat cheese fan, feel free to use cream cheese instead. In that case, you may want to jazz up the filling a bit more by adding some garlic powder or minced garlic to your mix.
Not only are these tangy pickled peppers stuffed with herbed goat cheese a bit addictive–who can resist sweet, tangy, spicy, crisp and creamy in one bite?–they’re also pretty adorable. See?!
A Note About Measurements
Don't let its small price and small size fool you. The Escali Primo is an accurate and easy-to-use food scale that I have used for years. It's easy to store, easy to use, has a tare function, and easily switches between grams and ounces/pounds for accurate measurements.
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Herbed Goat Cheese Stuffed Pickled Peppers
Ingredients
For the Brine
- 30 grams about 1 oz kosher salt
- 300 grams 1 1/4 cups water
For the Pickling Liquid
- 187 grams 3/4 cup vinegar (I used apple cider vinegar)
- 150 grams granulated sugar
- 125 grams 1/2 cup water
- 1 small sweet onion , chopped
- ½ teaspoon whole peppercorns
- 1 teaspoon dried Herbes de Provence
- 4 whole thyme sprigs
- 1/4-1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes , to taste (optional)
For the Herbed Goat Cheese
- 4 oz mild chevre
- pinch of kosher salt and several grindings of fresh black pepper.
- ½ teaspoon Herbes de Provence.
- minced pickled peppers , about 1/3 cup or so (See Instructions)
Instructions
To Brine
- Combine the water and salt and stir a few times. Set aside.
- Wash your peppers and cut off their stem end and slice off the merest bit of the blossom end. Carefully pull out the seeds and any white membranes.
- Stir the brining liquid again until all the salt has dissolved.
- Submerge the peppers completely in the brine. Use a small dish or a pickling weight/s to keep them submerged.
- Cover and let them sit at room temperature for 8-10 hours or overnight.
To Pickle
- Remove the peppers from the brine. Rinse and drain. Set aside convenient to the stove.
- Combine all the pickling ingredients except the pepper flakes in a medium saucepan. Bring to a hard boil and add the peppers and pepper flakes.
- Cook for 1-2 minutes only.
- Carefully put the peppers in a clean glass container and then pour the pickling liquid over the top. You may need to weigh the peppers down with a small plate or pickling weight/s. You want all the peppers completely submerged in the liquid.
- Let cool and refrigerate for at least 48 hours or up to a week.
- When time to stuff, cut off any longer peppers so that all of the peppers are no more than 1 1/2" long. Reserve the "pickled scraps" for the filling. If all of your peppers are shorter and rounder, you won’t need to trim them. In that case, mince up 3-4 extra pickled peppers to use in the filling.
For the Herbed Goat Cheese
- Mince up the reserved "pickled scraps."
- Mix all the filling ingredients together until well combined.
- Stuff each pepper with some of the goat cheese mixture. You should have just enough to completely fill your 12 peppers as long as you trimmed them all. I filled mine with a spoon, but you can also pipe the filling. Just make sure your tip has a wide enough opening that your minced peppers don’t get stuck.
- Store in the fridge, covered, but let them come to room temperature before serving so the filling is soft and creamy.
Did You Make Any Changes?
Notes
Nutrition
Please do give these little appetizers a try. You won’t be sorry.
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Wow Jenni – I am sold on the OXO containers! I like to prep my week’s veggies on Sunday, and normally I put them in zip-loc bags or plastic containers, and throw a paper towel in to grab the extra moisture. I like this idea much better – the charcoal, the humidity control…. LOVE. Off to order some.
They totally work! I used the last of the peppers on Monday, so I’d had them for probably close to 5 weeks, and they were *perfect,* Jenny!
I love this idea. I’ve been vacuum sealing excess in mason jars but this OXO idea is much easier. We’re another 2-person family and when we buy packaged food, it’s often too much.
Your stuffed pickled peppers would make me very happy!
Thanks, Maureen! Yes, these turned out really well–and if you can find Green Savers in Australia, they work so well. I just used the last few peppers last night. They were probably in the container about 4 weeks, and they were still perfect!