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Pepper powder from leftover hot sauce mash

SmokenFire

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Thanks to this website and subsequent research I've done on my own I have been making some good hot sauces from this year's grow (and any nice ripe peppers I find in local stores).  I will get the sauces/ferments ready, cook em up and then process with a food mill.  But I've always wondered if it were possible for me to get any other use from the pulp that is always left over from the hot sauce making process.
 
Well I found some tray screens for my dehydrator, so the last time I processed a batch of sauce I turned the leftover pulp out into those trays and let em go for about a week at 115 or so degrees.  Keep in mind this hot sauce was from a batch of ferment, so there's onion, carrot, garlic, fresnos, habaneros and some frozen fish pepper, cayenne and lombok peppers from this year's garden all mixed up in the mash that you see.
 
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That mash was processed.
 
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Then I took the leftover pulp and put it onto the dehydrator trays.  After drying it looked like this:
 
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In the grinder:
 
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Final product:
 
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Definitely an interesting powder.  A little bitterness - maybe from seeds, maybe from lime juice I added during cook down.  A little heat but not too much.  I think I'll mix this down with sweet ancho chili powder for balance and make some tacos.   :)
 
  
 
Yes, seeds may impart a bitterness. I always remove seeds before making powder. Other than that, sounds good, especially once you mix in some other chile powder(s)!
 
At first I was just curious, but I love the idea of making use of castoffs so the use of the mash makes sense from a non waste standpoint.  I'll remove the seeds before grinding next time and see what that does to the end product.
 
I've also saved some "tailings" from various projects in the past.  I imagine it would be tedious to pick the seeds out of food mill pulp.  If you think you may be saving the pulp, I'd spend the time to take at least some of the seeds out of the chiles before processing.  Hab-type chiles don't have a whole lot of seeds, but jalapeno and Fresno-types can be loaded with seeds.  I just cut 'em in half, pop out the core and give 'em a tap to get most of the seeds out.  Not too particular about getting Every Single Seed out, but that gets prolly 80-90% out. 
 
Have Fun!
 
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