Chili Peppers
I've been enjoying chili peppers to eat for quite some while and a few years back I decided on growing them myself.
Growing Peppers
At the moment it's autumn so all plants are at their end, but are still having quite some viable peppers left. The following peppers are the ones I grew in the 2024 season:
- Jalapeno (seeds from the harvest of 2023)
- Carolina Reaper (bought at peperzaden.nl)
- Madame Jeannette (seeds from the harvest of 2022)
- Pepecchia Tondo Rosso (produce mild, round, peppers, bought somewhere, don't remember)
- Ghost Pepper Lite (seeds from the harvest of 2023)
- Serrano (seeds from supermarket peppers)
- Cayenne (seeds from supermarket peppers)
- Caloro (It's basically a white/yellow jalapeno, bought somewhere, don't remember)
The Ghost Pepper Lite is a name I came up with myself. This plant was seeded with a seed that was in my Ghost Pepper collection, but it grew up to look more like bird's eye peppers, but with a potency more going towards Ghost Peppers. It's a nice lovely pepper.
The above list are the seeds that grew into actual peppers, I've planted a lot more, but some just didn't work out. The weather in the Netherlands was very wet in 2024, which was noticeable on all the tomato plants dying of sickness.
Processing Peppers
The peppers I harvest are used in multiple situations.
- Raw in salads, sandwiches or in other dishes
- Made into a Sambal Oelek style sauce
- Pickled for use on sandwiches
- Dried to make chili flakes or powder
Pickling Peppers
For the process of pickling peppers, I remove the stems and cut them up in slices. I've stored the juice and empty pickle jars I have and re-use that for pickling the peppers (sometimes with some left over pickles). Usually add a bit of additional vinegar, some salt and some mustard seed.
Drying Peppers
For the drying of peppers I use a food dehydrator. Trial and error (and some googling) let me get the settings right. Preferred temperature is 50 C, duration is dependant on the type of pepper and it's size.
The Ghost Pepper Lite needs around 10 hours to be sufficiently dried, however Jalapeno's need about 24 hours (they are thick, and usually picked when not entirely mature).
After they have been dried they can be chopped up to make chili flakes or even finer chili powder.
One other way to store them is in oil, to make it a spicy oil, but I've haven't tested that myself yet.
