How I Dry Hot Peppers

We have a food dehydrator.  Even still more often than not I find air-drying to be the better way to go.  Its slow, steady, and silent.  Plus, I enjoy the pretty strings of peppers hanging about the kitchen.  The bundles of herbs smell and look so lovely as they hang from the rod in the sewing room.

I thread a needle on a doubled over a piece of thread and knot the end.  I pierce the needle through the green stems atop the peppers and slide them down to the knot.  If I don't have enough to fill out the string I just leave the needle on and hang the line, as is, until I have enough to complete it.

When the string is completely full I leave a long enough tail to snip the needle off and tie a knot on the now-cut ends of the thread.  That leaves me with a loop I use to hang the string of peppers from hooks--the sort most people have houseplants hanging from--in our kitchen.  I pull off the dried peppers as needed throughout the winter and spring.  Its very handy as well as attractive.

Our friend, Mary, gave us quite a nice bundle of hot peppers to add variety to our cayennes and jalapenos.  I ate a Tabasco pepper raw at her house.  I got the hiccups immediately.  Oooooh, it was intense.  I really should add more variety to the hot peppers we grow though. They seem to add a depth and novelty to the flavor of the salsas and sauces we've made so far.   The tomatillo salsa in particular was much better than last year's.

We've had a great crop of peppers this year.  With a forecast for some more extended autumn heat we could have the best yet.

With so many peppers to play with I am also trying my hand at picking peppers for the first time.  I'm told pickled peppers make for great hot sauce.  I love hot sauce.  Its where most of these strings of dried peppers will end up, actually.  So, I am totally up for trying another method of preservation that leads to a new hot sauce recipe. Sounds good to me!