Ajvar (Roasted Eggplant and Pepper Spread)

Ajvar is a sweet roasted red pepper and eggplant spread from the Balkans. With this tested canning recipe, you can keep jars on the pantry shelf. Open one in the middle of winter, and you have roasted peppers ready to spread on bread, serve with grilled meat, or set out as a dip.

Ajvar (pronounced eye-var) is sweet, a little tangy, and thick enough to spread. You’ll find it on tables all over the Balkans, in Serbia, North Macedonia, Croatia, and Bosnia. Every jar starts with roasted red peppers.

Ajvar season is September and October, when red peppers are at their peak. Families and neighbors get together to roast whole peppers over an open fire, peel them by hand, and fill jars for winter. It’s part of zimnica, the winter foods that go into the pantry alongside pickled vegetables.

Ball’s version adds roasted eggplant to the peppers, along with garlic and cider vinegar. It’s a good way to put up a batch when the garden gives you plenty of both.

I made mine from Ball’s ajvar recipe, one of the new recipes they added to the 38th edition of the Ball Blue Book.

If your peppers and eggplant are coming in faster than you can eat them, I have plenty more pepper canning recipes and eggplant canning recipes, including an eggplant puttanesca sauce that uses up a pile of both. For the eggplant you cook fresh, there’s a long list of eggplant recipes to try.

What Is Ajvar?

Ajvar is a roasted red pepper relish. The name comes from the Turkish word for caviar. Restaurants in Belgrade once served a red pepper salad as a stand-in for caviar and called it red ajvar. The name stuck.

Sweet ajvar is the traditional kind, and hot ajvar gets its heat from added chile peppers. Some families add eggplant or tomato. Ball’s recipe uses eggplant.

Traditional ajvar cooks for hours with a good amount of sunflower oil. None of those family recipes have a tested canning process. Ball developed this one for the water bath canner, with vinegar for acidity and no oil in the jar.

Choosing Peppers and Eggplant

Ball’s recipe calls for red bell peppers. Pick ones that are fully red, with no green on the shoulders. A pepper that’s still partly green hasn’t finished ripening, and it tastes grassy even after roasting.

Traditional ajvar starts with roga, a long, horn-shaped red pepper that ripens in late September. Ball developed this recipe with red bell peppers, though, so that’s what I used. In terms of canning safety, you can use any type of pepper, hot or sweet.

For the eggplant, pick firm fruit with tight, glossy skin. Any variety works as long as you go by weight, since you scoop the flesh out of the skins after roasting.

Go by weight rather than counting, since eggplant and pepper sizes vary a lot. Ball measured the vinegar for the recipe weights. If you have more peppers than this recipe needs, canning peppers plain is an easy way to put up the rest, or make pickled bell peppers if you want them crisp.

Ingredients for Ajvar

There are only five ingredients, plus a hot pepper if you’d like some heat.

• Red bell peppers: They make up most of the spread once you roast, peel, and blend them. Use fully ripe red ones.
• Eggplant: It gives the spread more body. You roast it in halves and scoop the flesh out of the skins.
• Garlic: Raw cloves go straight into the food processor with the roasted vegetables, and they cook when the spread comes to a boil.
• Cider vinegar: This is what makes ajvar safe to can, so use the full amount and check that the label says at least 5% acidity. I use cider vinegar in a glass bottle so it isn’t sitting in plastic. White wine vinegar at 5% or higher works in its place.
• Salt: It’s for flavor only, so you can use less. Canning and pickling salt dissolves cleanly and has no additives. My guide to pickling salt and substitutions covers the other choices.
• Hot red pepper: Optional. Seed it and roast it on the pepper sheet. A pinch of cayenne works instead if you don’t have a fresh one.

How to Make Ajvar

Ajvar is mostly oven time. The peppers and eggplant roast, the peppers steam so the skins come off, and then everything goes through the food processor and into a pot with the vinegar.

Fill your water bath canner and start heating it before you turn on the oven. A full canner takes a while to come to a boil. It should be ready by the time the hot ajvar goes into the jars.

Roast the Peppers and Eggplant

Heat the oven to 400 degrees F, and line two rimmed baking sheets with parchment paper. I use parchment instead of oiling the pans.

Cut the eggplants in half lengthwise and lay them skin side up on one sheet. Poke the skins a few times with a fork so the steam can escape.

Halve the bell peppers, remove the seeds, and lay them skin-side up on the second sheet. If you’re adding the hot pepper, seed it and put it on the same sheet.

Roast until the skins start to char. The peppers take about 20 minutes, and the eggplant can take up to 30.

Peel the Peppers and Scoop the Eggplant

Take the peppers out first and put them in a lidded bowl, or set a plate over the top. Let them steam for 10 minutes to loosen the skins.

Peel off the skins with a sharp knife and discard them. Once the peppers have steamed, the skins should slip right off.

Let the eggplant cool until you can handle it. Then scoop out the flesh with a spoon and discard the skins and seeds.

Blend the Spread

Put the peeled peppers, the eggplant, the garlic, the salt, and the hot pepper, if you’re using it, into a food processor.

Pulse it on chop for a chunky spread, or run it on low for a smooth puree. The ball gives you both options, so choose what you plan to use it for. Chunky works well with grilled meat, and smooth spreads more easily on bread.

Cook with the Vinegar

Scrape the spread into a stainless steel or enameled saucepan over medium heat, and stir in the vinegar. Again, don’t cut back on the vinegar. It’s what makes ajvar safe to can.

Bring it to a boil, stirring the whole time. It’s thick, and it spits as it heats, so keep the spoon moving and keep your hands back.

Taste it once it’s hot. You can use less salt in your next batch, but leave everything else as written.

Canning Ajvar

Keep your half-pint jars hot in simmering water until you’re ready to fill them. A thick spread goes into the jars much more cleanly through a wide-mouth canning funnel.

Ladle the hot ajvar into the jars, leaving 1/2 inch headspace. Run a bubble tool around the inside of each jar to release trapped air, then check the headspace again and add more if it dropped. Wipe the rims, center the lids, and screw the bands on fingertip tight.

Set the jars in the canner, and make sure the water covers them by at least an inch. Bring it to a full rolling boil, then process half pints for 15 minutes at 0 to 1,000 feet, and adjust for altitude with the chart below.

When the time’s up, turn off the heat and take the lid off the canner. Let the jars sit for 5 minutes, then lift them out with a jar lifter and set them on a towel to cool for 12 to 24 hours.

If you’ve never used a canner, my guide to water bath canning for beginners walks through the whole process.

Ways to Use Ajvar

In the Balkans, ajvar goes on bread and comes to the table as a side dish. A thick slice of bread with a spoonful of ajvar and a little feta is an easy way to start on your first jar.

It’s also a condiment for grilled meat. Serve it next to sausages, burgers, lamb, or chicken, or spread it on a sandwich in place of mayonnaise. If you want to keep the Balkan theme going, pour a glass of smreka, a Balkan juniper berry soda, to go with it.

Stir a spoonful into rice or beans, or thin it with a little water for a quick pasta sauce. If you like having jars like that ready for dinner, there are plenty more pasta sauce recipes for canning to try.

For a party, set out a jar as a dip with pita and raw vegetables, next to a bowl of marinated peppers. If ajvar becomes a regular on your table, you can fill out the condiment shelf with green tomato ketchup and my relish recipes for canning.

Storage and Shelf Life

Once the jars have cooled, push down on the middle of each lid. A sealed lid doesn’t flex. Store the jars with the bands off, since a band can hold a loose lid in place and hide a seal that failed.

If a jar didn’t seal, put it in the refrigerator and use it within a week, or reprocess it within 24 hours with a new lid.

Store sealed jars in a cool, dark place, and use them within 12 to 18 months. After you open a jar, keep it in the refrigerator and use it within 1 to 2 weeks.

You can skip the canner, too. Ajvar keeps in the refrigerator for up to a week, or you can freeze it for up to a year.

Ajvar FAQs

Here’s what you can and can’t change in a jar of ajvar, starting with the oil that traditional recipes use.

More Pepper Canning Recipes

Still have peppers coming in? There’s plenty more to make with them.

Pickled Banana Peppers

Peach Salsa

Zucchini Relish Recipe for Canning

More Condiment Canning Recipes

A few more small jars for the condiment shelf.

Rhubarb BBQ Sauce

Apricot BBQ Sauce

Canning Cocktail Sauce