Hello from Montrose, CO with a new HarvestRight Freeze-Dryer

I have been dehydrating and grinding jalapeño and habanero peppers for years (and learned a couple of lessons the hard way!). We've just raised a crop of ghost peppers, and I just put them in our HarvestRight freeze-dryer, and plan to mill the finished product into a powder. I'm a bit apprehensive about processing them, but will use safety goggles, breathing mask and gloves!
 
I've searched the Web and not found anything on freeze-drying and grinding/milling hot peppers. Another old thread on these forums ased about HarvestRight freeze-drying peppers, but petered out. Anything new out there?
 
No, but I cut the stems off, and that seems to be an adequate path for the moisture to exit. Your thoughts?
 
Here's a pix of the tray with the GPs. The other stuff on the tray is applesauce drops, pre-frozen in silicone ice drop (cubes?) trays. BTW, F-D applesauce is awesome!
 

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We had a major apple crop last year, made lots of applesauce., and have been looking for a way to use it up. I put a layer of it in one of the FD trays, and in another dotted it with dollops (heaping Tsp). The freeze-dried product was delicious, and the sheet of FD applesauce sheet was fun, with consumers breaking off pieces, and the drops finding their way into our distance-running son's kit to sustain him on his runs. This time, I decided to try freezing the AS in silicone ice cube trays before putting it into the FD. We'll know how they come out in 24 hours or so, but we're expecting something spectacular.
 
While this product tastes exactly like applesauce, the consistency is so different that many people can't identify it as such. Jury is still out on the Ghost Peppers. I'm thinking that they will powder nicely up in a blender, and hoping so as the fugitive dust that the flour mill kicks up would make the atmosphere around the thing pretty toxic if the Ghost Peppers must be processed with it! FD tomatoes can be turned into a fine powder in a blender, but must be moved into a vacuum jar pretty quickly as other the powder starts to rehydrate in the atmospheric humidity!
 
The applesauce bonbons are quite firm and very tasty. I think that they will do well without vacuum storage (My grandkids would have them all eaten within a week if they had the chance). Three quarts of applesauce down to 7.8 Oz!
 
 
I don't want to double-post, so a more detailed response on this is in the thread, "Tried to make ghost chips," where I'm seeing advice on what to do with the freeze-dried Ghost Peppers.
 

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  • FD Applesauce + Ghost Peppers.JPG
    FD Applesauce + Ghost Peppers.JPG
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​Welcome!
 
Freeze dryer
I really envy you.
you will have to share some info here and post some pics and recipes.
 
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