Drying hot peppers
8Tuesday 08 September, 2015 by Uncle Spike
Here in Türkiye, we use a table condiment called Pul Biber on a daily basis. Basically it is red pepper flakes that are sprinkled onto hot meals, cold meals, salads, soups; basically anything we tend eat get’s a sprinkling 🙂
As with most foodstuffs, the taste varies tremendously, from mild and virtually tasteless (to my palate), to rather fiery. We used to buy from local merchants where we know the product.
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Of course, making one’s own is a far better option, as at least I know that no pesticides have been used, and I even pick and dry our own peppers, just like this.
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We only keep a dozen or so plants of this particular type (only used for these dry flakes), but that’s enough for the needs of our small family. So a small bucket twice a season is plenty.
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Stringing them up takes time, but it’s a fairly therapeutic task.
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I’ll then hang these out on the balconies for three weeks in the late summer heat – which is currently hovering around 38-40 (100-104F) daytimes, 25-30 (77-86F) at night. That’s still warm enough to do the job; much cooler and they’ll perhaps rot. Oh and here’s last year’s by the way – very tasty I must admit 🙂
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Uncle Spike's Adventures 
Superb sowing skills!! 😈
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Works a treat!
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🙂 They look very pretty. We’ve tried to dry them, but didn’t succeed. I guess it was the colder weather.
Have a very HAPPY and spicy day 🙂
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Hmm, yes, they need the heat for sure. Did they go mouldy? One trick is to snip the end of the tail off in order to let the moisture out (else they sweat and go mouldy), then hang in an ‘airing cupboard’, or dry roast on a large baking tray in a very low heat oven (most start at 50C, for instance).
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🙂 Thank you for the advice with snipping off the tip. That would have helped last year 😉
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Another alternative (if yıou just want to preserve for later use) is to rough chop the peppers into 1-2cm chucks, and then dry them of trays in the sun (can be cooler and takes 1/4 of the time). No risk of moulding, and when done, grab by the handful and place in a tupperware or jar. The seeds mostly stay on the tray (hard to pick up)… Unless you want/need ‘whole peppers’, we’ve found it an excellent way of dry storing.
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🙂 Thank you very much! That’s very good advice and I’ll keep it in mind!
Have a very HAPPY week 🙂
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You too…
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