Ideas for preserving too many hot peppers?

I have too many hot peppers this year. Ideas for preserving them or other ideas for what I can do with them? Besides giving them away which I already do.

I have already fermented as many as my husband will eat in a year.

Thank you!

I preserve my hot peppers either as pickled slices or I process them into hot sauce.

To be frank, I am still working on my hot sauce recipe but I really like having a sauce on hand that can dress up meals.

I like dried/dehydrated stuff. If you have a solar dehydrator, dice or slice your peppers and have a go at drying them over a few days and see how well they turn out.

Here at Wheaton Labs, we also have screens that we suspend near the ceiling so they're out of the way, and dry foods up there where the warm air collects. Both the outdoor and indoor methods work very well in our climate.

I ferment them and blend with onion and garlic to make a sriracha substitute to put in pretty bottles. They make great Christmas presents. Maybe dry some and make some dry rubs as well to give out with it.

OR dry them whole on strings and hang them in fruit trees and tomatoe plants to keep deer and squirrels away. Might even work to keep mice out of the house? I haven't tried it but I bet theres a way. Mammals dont like the smell or taste of it so they avoid it.

Another vote for drying them. Then you can crunch them up into powder or flakes and they will keep for a very long time if dried properly.

Julie, welcome to the forum!

Too many hot peppers,sad.

What kind of hot peppers do you have?

Jalapeno Jelly is a must for folks in Texas, maybe substitute the kind of peppers you have.

Other suggestions would be to make hot sauce, salsa, create chili pepper flakes or powders.

https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/47520/jalapeno-jelly/

You can not preserve them to be used like fresh later. Many vegetables can be blanched and then frozen but peppers especially the hot ones lose their appealwith this method. Also if you he a lot of them, you will waste a lot of freezer space. Here are a few things you can  do.

1- Sun dry fully (dehydratetor also work). You can store them in cloth bags for several years.
- How to use them:  
a) put them in warm water before use to rehydrate. Use them as fresh pepper subsitute in stews etc.
b) Fry them in oil (avarage heat, short period) and serve with meal, espacially meats.
c) Do not throw away cracked or broken ones. Put them in blender and store as paprika powder.
d)  Dried bell pepper (eggplants as well) tastes great when you make  stuffed pepper with meat.
f) Blend some, crash some, add pinches of ginger, garlic and salt put them in heat resisten  jar, pour hot but not bubble hot oil to make chinese hot oil.

2- Slightly dry than smoke
- How to use them:  
Same as 1.

3- Slightly dry than store with virgin oil and herbs of your choice. (Instead of sun drying you can keep it in  salt for slight dehydratation but you have to wash the to remove excess salt.)
- How to use them:  
As garnish or appetizer (sweet or mild ones are better)

4. Ferment as whole to use as garnish and appetizer.

5. Chop 1st ferment (add spices of you choice or ferment as pure), >blend 2nd ferment, >turn in to hot sauce.

6. Boil chopped peppers with tomate and herbs, blend and store as mild hot sauce.

You can experiment by mixing different types of peppers for all of the above.

bon appetite

 

Between hot sauce, salsa, and chill-powder, I've never had too much. It sounds like a wonderful problem to have.

The suggestion above of smoking has merit. Smoked paprika is pricey in my area, and adds a nice bit of extra flavor to many things. If you don't have a smoker yourself, ask around and maybe someone will smoke a bunch and divide the results with you?

String them up to make ristras. I learned last year about "Sweet Hots" hot peppers pickled with a bread-and-butter pickle style brine that I really enjoyed.

Julie Gentry wrote:I have too many hot peppers this year. Ideas for preserving them or other ideas for what I can do with them? Besides giving them away which I already do.

I have already fermented as many as my husband will eat in a year.

Thank you!

I've had success freezing large quantities, then boiling them down to make salsa and hot sauce later!

Just be aware that the freezing damage can possibly increase the heat... and the boiling process is kind of chemical warfare in your own kitchen. Ventilation is good!!

Jay Angler wrote:The suggestion above of smoking has merit. Smoked paprika is pricey in my area, and adds a nice bit of extra flavor to many things. If you don't have a smoker yourself, ask around and maybe someone will smoke a bunch and divide the results with you?

Unless you have quite a lot to smoke, you do not need a smoker.  In my area hot pepper are ready to be harvested around early September. During that period temperatures start to drop around 25 C (77 F). Good enough for cold smoking. A mid to large size BBQ with top lid will do the trick. the hexagonal briquett charchoals burn around 5-6 hours. Light half of one in one side of BBQ and place the peppers to the other side.  Occasionally you can add small wood chips for flavor. Both meats and vegitables absorb the smoke during the early stages. Once the heat starts to create a crust over them they can no longer absorb much smoke. Here is where "half dried" i mentioned comes to play. You do not need to wait 12 + hours for peppers to dry. You can do several batches a day.  You can also smoke in a big pot with thin foil method in your kitchen with small wood chips but it is time consuming and pepper fumes are not everyones favorite.    

Jay Angler wrote:The suggestion above of smoking has merit. Smoked paprika is pricey in my area, and adds a nice bit of extra flavor to many things. If you don't have a smoker yourself, ask around and maybe someone will smoke a bunch and divide the results with you?

If you like smoked paprika I also recomend you to try fried pepper. If you can find, best variety is "rezha macedonian pepper" type of Cayenne pepper native to Macedonia. Friying can be tricky at first. Add a few teaspoons of olive oil to a wide pot. Use low to medium heat and add the peppers as whole even before you see the oil start to smoke. Toss the peppers for a minute or so until they all look shiny and take them to a plate. Frying this way make them even crispier and intensify their flavour. If you leave them out uncovers on your counter top, they may keep their crispiness for a few days. If you put them in refrigirator they become rubbery and loose their taste. Everyone in our family loves them and want me to fry more than they can eat. so there is always a few left overs that I confidently testify their cripiness after a few days.

I enjoy dehydrating all forms of peppers, including bells ( with flesh removed) and then grinding them into powder. Takes up far less space than canning and can be added as a finish to just about any meal. The flavor profiles may surprise you as they hold pretty true to their pre-dried state.

Honestly the powder route is hard to beat for volume. I grow way too many chillis every year and drying them then grinding into flakes takes up almost no space compared to jars of sauce. I just thread them onto string and hang them in the kitchen until they're completely dry, then blitz in a cheap coffee grinder. Keeps for ages in a sealed jar and you use them in everything through winter.

Cowboy candy! Hot peppers pickled in a sweet brine. Fabulous! Lots of recipes online.

Douglas Alpenstock wrote:Cowboy candy! Hot peppers pickled in a sweet brine. Fabulous! Lots of recipes online.

I agree! Love that cowboy candy! I add some habanero or scotch bonnet slices or red pepper flakes to bring up the heat level!

In addition to the dehydrating and canning or sauce suggestions, I would recommend freezing some of the small hot ones that you cook with.

Last year a friend and I split a box of small hot red and a box of small green hot peppers. I froze them on a tray in the freezer so they would stay separate, then put them in a glass jar in the freezer.

They have stayed separate and easy to get one out. I slice them up and use them in cooking, and they work great.

We dry them all, sweet and hot alike then blend them together in mixes with varying degrees of heat. Sometimes a mix includes other things like garlic, various herbs or sea salt.

Thank you Anne. They are some kind of spicy lemon pepper.

Anne Miller wrote:Julie, welcome to the forum!

Too many hot peppers,sad.

What kind of hot peppers do you have?

Jalapeno Jelly is a must for folks in Texas, maybe substitute the kind of peppers you have.

Other suggestions would be to make hot sauce, salsa, create chili pepper flakes or powders.

https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/47520/jalapeno-jelly/

Hi everyone. So i tend to get a years` or more worth of hot peppers out of my harvests, and we really like to cook hot !
For me this is another vote for drying them. Why ?

1. As long as you keep them in a dry place, they simply never go bad
2. You can grind as much as you need for a meal , and if you have a bit of left over of one pepper, it simply stays the way it is.
3. Pickling is a great idea, but it uses another resource, and I tend to try to use as little resources as possible to preserve items.
4. I tend to grow different kind of peppers. Keeping them nicely dried and bundled and separate let's me easily choose how spicy i want to cook that day.

In recent years, I have started to grow Cayenne pepper, especially for its medicinal qualities. Read up on it , if you like, it is really an astonishing gift of nature.

Julie Gentry wrote:Thank you Anne. They are some kind of spicy lemon pepper.

Sounds yummy.  Do you have a picture?

Hi there!

I third (?) the cowboy candy idea - my family makes a lot of hot pepper preserves, and these are one of my favourites. Good on sandwiches, with cheese, tacos, baked into cornbread or just on their own.

Strangely enough, I actually had a discussion with one of my friends yesterday about this very topic to see if she had any brilliant ideas, and the one I thought sounded most intriguing was making a Caribbean style hot sauce with mango or papaya - I found a few recipes online on a quick search:

https://www.seriouseats.com/papaya-habanero-hot-sauce-recipe
https://www.chilipeppermadness.com/chili-pepper-recipes/hot-sauces/caribbean-style-mango-habanero-hot-sauce-video/

Depending on the kind of peppers you're growing, there may also be some recipes for using them up fresh - some hot peppers are nice stuffed. I'm growing pepperoncini and for some reason they are so much more prolific than my other pepper plants this year. In addition to the standard pickles I managed to find a recipe to stuff them with cheese and anchovy which I thought sounded quite tasty and plan to try when they're ready to harvest.

https://food52.com/recipes/23106-stuffed-pepperoncini

If you make a lot of chilli or other recipes that call for hot peppers, you could also try sauteeing batches of them to freeze in small portions to add as needed. I usually do that when I buy a can of chipotle in adobo and can't use up the whole amount without scorching the earth.

Happy cooking!

Every year we make a big pot of spicy ketchup - pureed peppers, tomatoes, garlic and onion cooked down to a slurry.
Sugar, vinegar, salt (sage, oregano, basil, whatever is on hand) to taste.
Basically liquified Cowboy Candy. It doesn't last long.

My favorite is to slow dry them in my rock smoker. Powdered dried smoked jalapeño is what Chipotle is afterall! 😋 plus is keeps forever that way, takes up almost no room, and is easy to use!

Another idea I haven't seen in this thread yet: Bermuda Sherry Peppers.

Traditionally you just add small hot chilies to a bottle of sherry. You can also use a sterile canning jar and larger chilies. Allow to steep in a dark place for a few weeks or longer. A spoonful of sherry peppers really perks up winter soups, stews, bean dishes, etc. You can mince or mash up the chilies and add them too.

This is what they are. My husband really likes them. Kind of changes it up a bit for him.

Anne Miller wrote:

Julie Gentry wrote:Thank you Anne. They are some kind of spicy lemon pepper.

Sounds yummy.  Do you have a picture?

saluti tutti

Moments of hot pepper madness or is it folly?

The mention of candy reminded me of misspent middle age
A friend with asian antecedents used to consume at least 6 chili peppers, every day.
One day, chewing the cud, I came across chocolate covered plums, and before I or we could help ourselves,
we made some chocolate covered chilis. A treat nor for the faint hearted though a wonderful marriage of sensations.
By the by, I also make a delicious hot cocoa drink with boiling water, lots of ground spices and grains, maybe a nut or two and chili of course.
It s a wonderful winter pick me up,

Mark Land, hello, mentioned chili and medicinal properties.
I have red green and yellow chilis so I have prepared traffic light tinctures.
Sliced chilis in attractive glass jars in traffic light colours
I added some turmeric root to the yellow chili.
The idea is that I can add drops of tincture to food preparation, oil, herbal teas etc as it is allegedly a boon to one s blood system and a pain
reliever.
I believe one can acquire a chili salve which can be used like tiger balm. Or you can make some up yourself and live with the consequences.
Yes, I do like chili.

https://www.chilipeppermadness.com/recipes/chili-crisp/  a link someone kindly put up on a forum recently, I m in the middle of studying it
at the moment.
Thank you for the link.

We had 9mm of rain yesterday on seriously parched soil. Better than nothing and more big heat forecast.
I have lived in the tropics so maybe I make an effort to adapt but it is harder for the local flora and fauna to handle climate madness.
Good thoughts to those experiencing harsh realities.

off to make nocturnal sauerkraut, it s dark outside,
Blessings
MH

marie-helene kutek wrote:saluti tutti

Moments of hot pepper madness or is it folly?

The mention of candy reminded me of misspent middle age
A friend with asian antecedents used to consume at least 6 chili peppers, every day.
One day, chewing the cud, I came across chocolate covered plums, and before I or we could help ourselves,
we made some chocolate covered chilis. A treat nor for the faint hearted though a wonderful marriage of sensations.
By the by, I also make a delicious hot cocoa drink with boiling water, lots of ground spices and grains, maybe a nut or two and chili of course.
It s a wonderful winter pick me up,

Mark Land, hello, mentioned chili and medicinal properties.
I have red green and yellow chilis so I have prepared traffic light tinctures.
Sliced chilis in attractive glass jars in traffic light colours
I added some turmeric root to the yellow chili.
The idea is that I can add drops of tincture to food preparation, oil, herbal teas etc as it is allegedly a boon to one s blood system and a pain
reliever.
I believe one can acquire a chili salve which can be used like tiger balm. Or you can make some up yourself and live with the consequences.
Yes, I do like chili.

https://www.chilipeppermadness.com/recipes/chili-crisp/  a link someone kindly put up on a forum recently, I m in the middle of studying it
at the moment.
Thank you for the link.

We had 9mm of rain yesterday on seriously parched soil. Better than nothing and more big heat forecast.
I have lived in the tropics so maybe I make an effort to adapt but it is harder for the local flora and fauna to handle climate madness.
Good thoughts to those experiencing harsh realities.

off to make nocturnal sauerkraut, it s dark outside,
Blessings
MH

You've given me an idea; I'm thinking of steeping some in warm milk, and then making hot chocolate with the milk.  Or even just adding a sweetener (honey, maple syrup).  I rarely drink milk, but this hot pepper/hot drink concept may be a delicious way to use up late-season scotch bonnets or jalapenos.