Drying Peppers

This year I grew a bunch of peppers I’d never grown before.   I usually just make hot sauces or use fresh peppers in my cooking.  For hot sauces I will freeze peppers as they ripen until I have enough for a decent amount of sauce.  But to fully utilize my Alma Paprika and Joe’s Long Cayenne Peppers I needed to dry them.  I learned that not all peppers dry the same, so I used two different methods. 

 

I also dried some of my Thai Hot Peppers, because they are small and perfect for throwing into soups, pastas, curries, etc.  So for the Thai Hot and Joe’s Long Cayenne Peppers, I simply strung the peppers through their stems on cording.  I used sewing thread for the small peppers and yarn/hemp for the larger peppers.  You can tie a bead or large knot on the bottom of the string to keep the peppers from sliding off as they shrivel up.

 

 

I let the smaller peppers touch each other, but for the cayenne peppers I tied a knot every 3 inches or so after each stem to keep them dry and separated. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hang the strung peppers in a sunny window.  I just put a couple nails at the top of my window sill and hung the peppers from there.  You can hang them outside, but if it rains and the peppers get moist they will rot or mold.  At first I put the nails on the outside of the window sill, but I kept forgetting to bring the peppers in now that it’s finally raining again!

 

 

 

I had trouble with my paprika peppers; my first harvest rotted when I tried to hang them.   I’ve been dehydrating the rest in my oven.  I slice the peppers and spread them onto a baking sheet.

 

 

 

 

 

Then bake them on the lowest setting for several hours until all the moisture cooks out. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I ground them up in a blender and made Paprika!  It smells and tastes amazing, I’m going to use it in a potato salad for this weekend.

 

I’m still waiting for the cayenne peppers to dry completely so I can grind them up too; I can’t wait because I love cayenne powder.  One of my favorites is to add it to Alfredo sauce for spicy Alfredo!  I throw a little cayenne in everything to add some spice!

Tabasco Sauce Recipe

While at our neighborhood farmer’s market I noticed a friend selling a bag of tabasco peppers.  I really wanted to make tabasco sauce this year, but my plants are still about 5 inches tall so sadly I don’t expect to get any peppers from them.  But since the market was almost over and no one else showed any interest in the peppers, my friend gave them to me and in return I would make us some hot sauce.

While looking around for recipes I stumbled upon this site that has several different tabasco pepper recipes.  Apparently the real Tabasco sauce is still made by taking tabasco peppers and salt and letting the mixture ferment for 3 years in oak barrels.  It’s pretty cool they still use this technique, and don’t have to add anything else except some vinegar, so you can really taste the pepper.

I didn’t want to wait 3 years for our sauce so I went with the 1947 Tabasco Sauce Recipe.  I can’t remember what tabasco sauce tastes like exactly, but mine turned out sweet and spicy.  I’ve been putting it on all kinds of food; veggie burgers, eggs, soups, etc.  I would definitely use this recipe again.  Here is what I did…

To start, I had way more peppers than the recipe called for so I adjusted the recipe accordingly.  I ended up with about 150 peppers.  I pulled the little green caps off them, and I saved the seeds from the largest peppers by slicing them down the middle and scooping the seeds into a bowl.

 

 

 

Then I peeled 4 big garlic cloves and put them in a pot with my peppers and 4 cups of water.  I let the peppers and garlic simmer until they were tender.  Maybe there is a better way to do this, but this stage was pretty intense.  The hot pepper fumes filled the house and made our eyes water.  Once I put a lid on the pot and got all the fans going it became bearable, so I would recommend doing this from the beginning.

 

Once everything was nice and tender I put the mixture in a blender.  Then I dumped the pepper mash through a strainer over a bowl in order to keep the seeds and skins out of my sauce.  I put the liquid back into the pot and added: 4 tbsp sugar, 2 tsp salt, 4 tsp wasabi powder, and 4 cups of white vinegar.  The recipe calls for horseradish and hot vinegar, I didn’t have either so I substituted these ingredients for wasabi (since it’s similar to horseradish) and white distilled vinegar.  I let this mixture simmer for a while until all the ingredients were blended together.  Then I poured the sauce into mason jars and immediately through some on a sandwich!  Adds great flavor, I just don’t know how long it’s going to last because we can’t stop eating it!

Father's Day Gift Box

I always have a little trouble coming up with gifts for my dad.  If I had lots of money it would be no issue, because I’m constantly seeing cool gadgets and tech stuff my dad would love!  But I like making my gifts anyways, so when Father’s Day snuck up on me this year I decided to go with an old staple gift… hot sauce!  I made my first batch 2 Christmas’s ago (for my dad!) and I’ve been hooked.  Hot sauce is super easy to make and a great way to use hot peppers up at the end of the summer.  I’m still experimenting with different recipes, and trying to create my own perfect recipe; so this time around I tried Pepper Joe’s Island Hot Sauce Recipe.  It turned out great!  Super spicy with a hint of garlic, onions and lime!  I put it in a Mason jar and attached a sticker on the lid where I stamped out “dad’s fire breath”.

 

 

I also bought him a couple nice beers from this cute little craft beer store around the corner called The Listing Loon.  I needed something to put it all in.  I found this awesome list here that someone composed of tutorials for all different shaped gift boxes.  Using a couple of these as models, I cut a box from a larger cardboard box, glued it together, cut out handles and decorated the outside.  Then I put my gifts inside, and stuffed some ripped up paper in between the bottles so they didn’t break.  I even made my own confetti from the cardboard scraps.  I just cut them into strips and then pulled apart the layers of paper.  Easy, cheap and 100% recyclable!