Ripe peppers, chili peppers and chillies in the garden every day? Too many to use fresh. What to do with the pods? What could be more obvious than to dry and grind them.

Drying method for thick-fleshed and thin-fleshed peppers:

  • oven
  • drying cabinets
  • dehydrators
  • air drying

Thick-fleshed peppers can only be dried in the oven, drying cabinet or dehydrator. Thin-fleshed chilies like cayenne are also suitable for air drying. Any drying method removes a lot of water from the pods and reduces bacteria and microorganisms. Peppers are preserved and prepared for grinding into chili powder or crushing into coarse pizza peppers.

Thin-fleshed peppers for air drying

  • Aji Yellow (Amarillo)
  • Andy (Hot Cayenne)
  • cayenne
  • Zimbabwe Birdeye
  • piri-piri

Thick-fleshed peppers for ovens, drying cabinets or dehydrators

  • Anaheim
  • Romanian
  • apple sweet
  • Caribbean Red
  • pepperoni

Air dry peppers

Use a needle to pull the chili peppers on a piece of string and hang them up like a clothesline. Then let the peppers dry in the warm shade at 15° degrees on the open skylight.
In chili countries like Hungary or Mexico, peppers are still dried in the traditional way with braided chains - risttras - hanging on the house wall. Drying takes 3 to 6 weeks.

Dry the peppers in the dehydrator

Thicker varieties dry best in an electric dehydrator. Hot air blows up through the sieve trays from below. This removes water from the chillies. It smells all over the house. Caution! With hotter peppers, the eyes sometimes water. Depending on the device and the type of chili, drying can take eight hours. Once the dried pods have cooled down, immediately put them in an airtight container.

Grind paprika into powder

For a milder paprika or chili powder, remove the stems, calyx and seeds from the pods before grinding. Then remove. Then grind the pods into a powder in an electric coffee grinder. Or crush with a mortar to a coarse pizza pepper.

tips and tricks

To preserve peppers, you can pickle them in vinegar or oil. Or dry, grind and use as a spice. Pickled peppers are suitable as an accompaniment to meat at a barbecue party or as an appetizer.

The garden journal freshness ABC

How can fruit and vegetables be stored correctly so that they stay fresh for as long as possible?

The garden journal freshness ABC as a poster:

  • as a free PDF file to print out yourself

Category:

Vegetable garden