Andy's Pepper Drying Experiment

Rivet recently sent me a jar of the most wonderful dried pepper mix that you can imagine, it's called "Dave's Dragon Dust", and is made from the hottest peppers on Earth. 



Notice the vibrant and beautiful colour retained by the dried peppers, impossible to replicate when using a dehydrator, when using a dehydrator they end up looking brown and burnt, whilst these look as fresh as the day they were harvested.  Just beautiful.

 


From Dave's website:

"Made from some of the hottest and most flavorful Habaneros from around the world. We have included the Caribbean Red, Lemon Drop, Red Savina ®, Scotch Bonnet and others. Also our own Hickory smoked Jalapenos (Chipotle). This blend also has Serrano, Thai, Tepin, Pequin, Cayenne AND the new Guinness Book of world record holding hot pepper, the Bhut Jolokia also know as the Naga Jolokia or Naga Morich."

http://www.dragonsdust.com/our_products.html

I have been eating Dragon Dust on everything from burgers to grilled chicken to pizza and it is fantastic.  If you are a chilihead like me you will find this stuff to be Heaven on Earth when you eat it and Hell on Earth a few hours later when it is finished with you.



So...........

I have a bumper crop of Red Savina and Orange habaneros.  I had previously smoke dried a couple of pounds of them over applewood and ground them into powder which is very good.  After trying Dragon Dust I decided I wanted to try to dry some traditionally, the method by which Dave claims to produce "Dragon Dust" which supposedly preserves not only their vibrant colour but also more of their heat.  The traditional method for doing this is to string them on a thread and hang them in a breezy place.  This is called a "ristra".

From Wikipedia:

"Ristras are arrangements of drying chile pepper pods. Although their main purpose is to preserve chiles for later consumption, they are commonly used decoratively in chile-producing areas, especially New Mexico."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ristra

My version of a ristra which is now hanging in our well-ventilated sunroom...






Rivet has offered to send me some dried Tabasco peppers from his garden which he says are white-hot and bone-dry.   My goal is to produce something similar to "Dragon Dust" made from FOTW members' peppers, so far using my Red Savina and Orange Habaneros and John's Tabascos. 

Stay tuned......

hey, andy - none of my pepper plants produced this year, so i have none to send - however, i do have some interesting dried chiles that my mother brought up from colorado. i am not sure of the variety, but they are good ones! if you'd like i can send a sampling to you for your perusal!

Andy.....received your salsa and smoked habañero powder yesterday, and can't thank you enough!
I tried the powder first...took about a good pinch 1/8-1/4 tsp and put it on my tongue. Well, not being a true chili-head, I gotta tell you it lit me up LOL. Pretty spicy stuff.

When Rivet's calypso salsa gets here, I'm going to make some aztec chips and we'll have another tasting session at the pub.

Pics and a complete story to follow.

alright, here's a question for the chile-heads here:

kiwi, that sounds like it might be the way to go. they look and smell fine except for the obvious, which seems to ahve been just starting and not very far advanced. the paste sounds like an interesting idea - i take it i would just make it with a little water added to ground peppers and then use it as i would normally use the chiles?

Tas, yeah just grind them up. If you need a bit of moisture in there to paste them, water is fine, and so is a little oil of vinegar as rivet suggests. You could take the opportunity to make a really nice thai curry paste - chuck in some corriander, shallots, garlic, galangal (or ginger as a substitute if you have to), shrimp paste, salt and a little tumeric with the chillis. That would make an awesome green curry sauce / gravy when fried up and cooked with coconut cream, thai basil and some kaffir lime leaves.

well, folks, after a thorough rinse and wipe-down, the huge majority of the chiles are drying off now on paper towels, and i will string them up later today or tonight. i only lost about a dozen, maybe a little less, the rest came out just fine.

hey john - yep, that's what i instinctively chose to do, for the reasons you mentioned. some stems were gone, so i i decided to string them all up through the middle of the pods, roughly from largest at the bottom to smallest at top. here's how they look (forgive the bad photography!):