drying hot peppers

11 years ago

I think that I have read on this forum about pulling pepper plants in the fall and hanging them in it a barn of shed to dry for winter use. If so, is there anything special I need to do. I am going to have a bumper crop of hot peppers

Featured Answer

Okiedawn OK Zone 7

11 years ago

I do it the way Auther describes, though I am more prone to put them in my tornado shelter than in my shed because varmints cannot break into my tornado shelter.

I also have dehydrated them in my convection oven which has a dehydrate mode, and in the regular oven turned down as low as possible back before we bought the convection oven.

I also have strung the peppers on string (heavy fishing line works well) using a large needle, and hung them up in my kitchen to dry. They'll also dry hanging on my covered front porch in all by the wettest of autumns.

You also can roast them in the oven and then freeze them for use in cooking in winter. I also chop them and slice them and freeze them for winter cooking, and specifically with jalapeno peppers, I often slice them in half, deseed them, roast them in the oven for a while (not so long the skin turns black) and freeze them. Then in winter, I thaw them slightly, stuff them with a mix of grated cheddar cheese/cream cheese, top each one with a little slice of bacon and make oven-baked poppers.

I also take a bunch of hot peppers, remove the stems, run them through the food processor to chop them up, and then dehydrate the chopped up peppers. Once they are dehydrated enough that the moisture is out of them, I use them as pepper flakes or grind them up further into powder.

Peppers are easy to preserve.

When I hang the pepper plant upside down, as long as I keep it in a place that has above freezing temperatures, I've often got "fresh" peppers until at least January. At some point, though, they do begin to shrivel up. If the air is dry enough at that point, they'll dry right there on the plant, but if it is moist and humid, they can develop rot.

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Comments (8)

chickencoupe
11 years ago
Congrats on the bumper crop!
authereray
11 years ago
If you can leave them in the garden until just before it frost and then pull the plants and hang them in a shed and let them dry a while a frost wont hurt them. That is how I do unless there is a reason you want them out now, then you can do the same thing. Or you can pull them off the plant and put them in a cookie sheet and put them in the cook stove oven at as low a temperature as possible and leave until dry. I pick mine off the plants and set them behind the wood stove and stir them around ever once in a while and let them dry that way. Hope this is of a little help. I ground mine up and made Cayenne pepper flakes out of the, just like store bought.
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slowpoke_gardener
Original Author
11 years ago
Thank you, Johnny and Dawn. I will try to hang a few plants this year. I can remember as a child seeing hot peppers strung on sewing thread and hanging on the kitchen wall. I don't know if many people did this or not, but we had friends that did. I was too young to know what they did with them, but I guess they were used for cooking.
AmyinOwasso/zone 6b
11 years ago
I strung cayennes 2 years ago. Some were dehydrated in machine (outside). We also had a piece of pegboard we put the stem in so they would stand up to dry. Except for machine dried, I found about 1/3 with mold INSIDE. You could dry them in a car parked in the sun. I had a jar with just vinegar and peppers. I used the vinegar on things the dogs were bothering. Also where the rabbit wanted to nest in my garlic patch.
slowpoke_gardener
Original Author
11 years ago
Amy, I never thought about the car, I think that may be worth a try.
OklaMoni
11 years ago
I wonder, if the car gets to hot? I call it my pizza oven, but honestly never tried to cook in it. ;)

Moni
AmyinOwasso/zone 6b
11 years ago
I didn't come up with the car idea, I have read about it. In googling how hot a car in the sun gets, 125 was the highest I came across. I doubt it would ever get over 200 degrees, which is about what my dehdrater does. (Yes I know there are better dehydraters out there with lower or adjustable temps). It is a way of drying outside without bugs. BTW, in spring some people put their seedlings on the dash of a car like as a makeshift greenhouse.