Garden Fresh Hot Pepper Flakes
We grew gobs of hot peppers this year, and today I want to share the absolute hottest idea that my Madre has ever had…garden fresh hot pepper flakes!
I absolutely love hot and spicy foods! Papa and I used to have heat competitions at the dinner table. We never said we were competing, but it was just understood…which ever one of us couldn’t finish a little piece of habanero pepper, or couldn’t manage more than a drop of Papa’s homemade hot sauce, was a wimp. I was usually deemed the wimp with Papa at the table, but I can amaze my friends at the amount of heat I can stand!
Hot peppers, or even sweet peppers, do really well in our garden. We only grew jalapenos this year, but Coach’s sweet parents brought over a big bag of their red bell peppers and hot banana peppers. I can only prepare peppers in so many ways, and I don’t want them to go to waste! Sure, I can stuff ’em and grill ’em. Of course, I can always make salsa! But I want these spicy little dudes to last as long as possible, so I just bring out my trusty dehydrator and get to work!
Farm living idea that rocks…dried peppers! Madre did this a few years ago with jalapenos, habaneros, bell peppers, and banana peppers. She sliced them up, dried them out, and then – the best part – ground them up! If you think red chile flakes are good on pizza, then you must try this! I sprinkle it on everything from soup to spaghetti! Even though they’ve been dehydrated and pulsed into flakes, I can still taste the garden-freshness in this concoction.
I loved the dried pepper flakes so much that Madre actually wrapped up this sweet little shaker-full and gave it to me for Christmas last year!
With some protective gloves for your tender hands (wimp!), slice up your peppers and give them a run through the dehydrator.
Your machine should have instructions for how to dry veggies, so this part is simple. If you don’t have a dehydrator, you can do it in the oven (that link will take you over to This Chick Cooks, another blog that I’m just going to have to start reading now…great minds and all..). 
Once they’re dried, I give them a good several pulses in a coffee-grinder. I have one for coffee beans and another one for peppers, but you can always pulse up a slice of bread in your grinder to clean out the spicy remains (although, spicy-hot coffee doesn’t sound bad to me). Update::: I dried peppers the same day this post went live. Madre reminded me: wear a mask and protective gloves for your *sissy* hands and throat when grinding these up in the coffee grinder!
I held onto some great little shakers that snap closed, so I packed some of my garden fresh hot pepper flakes away in those for safe-keeping. The cool shaker Madre gave me gets emptied quicker than you’d think, so the flakes do just fine in that vessel for me. I always have some for refills!
You know what else these hot and spicy garden fresh hot pepper flakes are delicious on? Fluffy, country-egg-omelets! Rich, scrambled country eggs! Any ol’ farm-fresh country eggs!
Farm living is the life for me, yessiree!! I think Grayson, the posing hen, agrees! 🙂
X,O,X,O, Martie
This post is linked up with #FoodieFriDIY!
September 9, 2015 @ 8:29 am
Now there is something we have in common, for sure! Yay hot peppers!
September 9, 2015 @ 1:41 pm
I’ll have to share a jar with you…this stuff is fantastic!
September 9, 2015 @ 5:32 pm
Pass. Wimp here.