How to Smoke your Home Grown Chillies
Preserve Chili Peppers by Smoking and Drying
With the high price of fresh chillies in grocery stores, many green-fingered and fiscally-challenged people have turned to growing their own. Some people do such a good job that their plant is soon laden with hot, ripe pods, just begging to be picked and put into a divinely spicy dish.
A chilli plant can produce hundreds of hot peppers. Come Fall, many chilli growers face a dilemma: I have too many chillies, how can I preserve them?
One popular way is to smoke and dry them. The famous Mexican chipotle is, in fact, a ripe, red jalapeno pepper slowly smoked (in underground pits according to the traditional Mexican method) over a period of days.
The beauty of smoke dried chillies is their depth of flavour, with silky smokiness complementing the heat of the pepper. So long as they are sufficiently dry before storing, and they are kept in an airtight container in a dark place, smoked chillies will last for years.
Picking Chillies to Smoke
For the most smoke flavour, it is best to smoke the larger, thick-walled varieties of chilli. Two good examples are jalapeno peppers and Hungarian yellow wax.
It is possible to smoke smaller, thin-walled varieties, however the smoke flavour is nowhere near as strong.
Ripe chillies – those that have reached their final color of red, orange or brown – should be used for smoking, rather than unripe chillies.
Choose chillies with no blemishes, insect damage or soft spots, although corking on jalapenos is acceptable – desirable even.
Smoker Equipment
The slower the smoke, the better the flavor, so a cold smoker (which has the heat source away from the food and the smoke is circulated through) is ideal. Cold smokers are available commercially, but people have been known to make their own with a little ingenuity and handyman ability.
Failing that, a kettle-style (Weber) barbeque may be used by laying water-soaked chunks of wood onto the glowing coals, or woodchips in a specially-made smoker box, with the vent slightly open to allow the smoke to circulate.
At a push, you can hot smoke your chillies in a fish smoker, although the end result won’t be as smoky as a slow-smoked chilli.
The wood you use for smoking should be a hard wood, like hickory, apple, or beech. Do not use resinous wood, like pine.
Whatever smoker you use, it is best if has not been used for fish or meat, as these will impart unwanted flavour in your chillies. If you’ve no choice, clean the smoker as thoroughly as possible before use.
Method of Smoking
First wash and dry your chillies. Get your smoker going and lay the chillies lengthwise on racks, allowing a little space between them to help the smoke circulate.
The time taken will depend on the smoker – the main challenge is to generate as much smoke with as little heat as possible. You don’t want to cook your chillies!
In a cold smoker, where there is almost no heat at the racks, you can smoke for two or three days, topping up the wood chips and heat source as necessary.
A low heat in a kettle barbeque will most likely take half a day. A fish smoker will take an hour or less.
Monitor your chillies regularly. The aim is for them to dry in the smoke without cooking. Cooking will make them mushy – not a good look!
As they dry, the chillies will turn brown and leathery. They should be dry enough to be light and flexible, and will weigh around one tenth of their original weight.
Infused as much smoke as you can in your smoker without cooking the chillies. If they are not dry enough at this point, you can finish drying them by spreading on an oven tray in the oven on a low heat (around 50°C) for several hours. Or use a dehydrator if you have one.
Storing and Using Smoked Chillies
When the chillies are dry enough, store them into a ziplock bag or another airtight container and keep somewhere cool and dark. They will last for at least a year or two in this way.
Keep the chillies whole until you are ready to use them – they will better retain their flavor and color. Whole smoked chillies can be ground into powder or flakes, chopped or used whole for a wonderfully hot and smoky dish.
Smoked hungarian wax chillies
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