We had a good harvest of chillies this year from our greenhouse and polytunnel. Too many to use fresh, despite my husband becoming addicted to slicing them raw on almost every meal put in front of him. What is he saying about my cooking? So we decided to dry them and crush them. We are very lucky to have an Aga, which has a warming oven that allows us to pop these in and leave them until they are ready. They take a good twelve hours at least so this will be harder to achieve with a standard oven that you need for cooking other meals.
All we did was to place them whole onto a grill rack on a baking tray and with the oven at its lowest temperature we left them in the oven until completely dry. We then allowed them to cool completely before grinding them in the pestle and mortar. We put them into a sterilised jar and they should keep for ages to add a spicy kick to our dishes throughout the winter.
Drying them makes them hotter than they were fresh so less dried chilli is needed when using in recipes.
Great tip on how to dry chillies. My mother has an aga, so we could probably use her. We had to pick ours green in the end as they weren’t ripening (we grow them outdoors), but I’m hoping they’ll ripen up eventually, even though they have been picked. I make a wicked chilli sauce and our stocks are running low!
Hi Choclette,
We too had to pick most of ours green in the end. Will you be giving your recipe for your chilli sauce on the Chocolate Log Blog? I hope so, always looking for ways of using chilli, for my addicted husband!
Kath
Hi Kath
Haven’t yet had chilli sauce with chocolate! But might make an exception and put the sauce recipe on my blog. Looks like we should have enough ripe chillies to make a batch shortly.
Choclette