hey i hate doing this, because there is so much great info here. but i have some questions on how long to dehydrate my peppers, with an aim to making them into powder via electric coffee grinder.
my dehydrator (salton vitapro ~$50) says to do vegetables (sliced 1/4" thick unless otherwise noted) at 50-55C and the entry for "peppers, hot" notes desired texture as "leathery" and time as 4-16 hours.
on this website, searching "dehydrate, dehydrating, drying" terms shows a lot of the same threads, and the one with the most dehydrating info had people saying "up to 24 hrs at 135F", "1-2 days", "i've left them a week", "until totally brittle", "until they snap when you try to bend it", "until i can crush between my fingers".
non-essential info: my experience is limited only to the last two years, and 2 years ago i just dried a couple dozen pods in the oven for lack of any idea what to do after my first harvest. last year i got the aforementioned dehydrator, because i had real aspirations of making a nice spicy powder to use in cooking or sprinkle on dishes (which i did in jalapeno and hab varieties), and also because my s/o didn't really like the air in the kitchen after using the oven method.
so last year i did habs and jalapeno using the instructions i said above (left it on from evening til morning/noon, 10-15 hours each time), and within a few days ground the pieces to a powder using a krups electric grinder. i had more habs than my shaker would hold powder, so i refrained from grinding about a quarter of what i had dried and deposited the pieces an old washed-out spice container.
the shakers themselves i do usually have to shake or tap before shaking out over food. there is a very slight clumping i see through the glass bottles but it's also mostly out of habit, as i do the same to other spice shakers too just to prevent a huge mass of spice dumping out. also, the dried segments that i left in the large empty spice container show no sign of condensation/moisture/mold a year later. the pieces don't shake with a dry rattle sound, because i followed instructions that said leathery was the target and i didn't want to leave them too long in case the utter dryness would deplete flavour.
AN IMPORTANT FACT i should add is that i sliced the peppers into at least 6-8 pieces each before dehydrating, to make dry time quicker but mostly to assess which pods were fresh/good to use. and i am doing the same with my ghosts this year (18 pods dried 2 weeks ago, 42 more picked and about to go in), cutting normal sized ones into 8 and larger/smaller ones accordingly to be uniformly sized.
so my question is, am i doing this properly or did my machine instructions leave something out? should i be leaving them longer to dry, or are others just being overly thorough? or is it a matter of choice, maybe does flavour factor in somewhere as to how long to leave it (fresh/flowery vs dry/smoky)? i quite like the hab powder i have, and it tastes fresh and powerful and in no way seems spoiled by being too moist and a year old. do i just keep on the way i've been doing, or are there some accepted rules/guidelines that you guys obey regarding safety/stability/flavour?
my dehydrator (salton vitapro ~$50) says to do vegetables (sliced 1/4" thick unless otherwise noted) at 50-55C and the entry for "peppers, hot" notes desired texture as "leathery" and time as 4-16 hours.
on this website, searching "dehydrate, dehydrating, drying" terms shows a lot of the same threads, and the one with the most dehydrating info had people saying "up to 24 hrs at 135F", "1-2 days", "i've left them a week", "until totally brittle", "until they snap when you try to bend it", "until i can crush between my fingers".
non-essential info: my experience is limited only to the last two years, and 2 years ago i just dried a couple dozen pods in the oven for lack of any idea what to do after my first harvest. last year i got the aforementioned dehydrator, because i had real aspirations of making a nice spicy powder to use in cooking or sprinkle on dishes (which i did in jalapeno and hab varieties), and also because my s/o didn't really like the air in the kitchen after using the oven method.
so last year i did habs and jalapeno using the instructions i said above (left it on from evening til morning/noon, 10-15 hours each time), and within a few days ground the pieces to a powder using a krups electric grinder. i had more habs than my shaker would hold powder, so i refrained from grinding about a quarter of what i had dried and deposited the pieces an old washed-out spice container.
the shakers themselves i do usually have to shake or tap before shaking out over food. there is a very slight clumping i see through the glass bottles but it's also mostly out of habit, as i do the same to other spice shakers too just to prevent a huge mass of spice dumping out. also, the dried segments that i left in the large empty spice container show no sign of condensation/moisture/mold a year later. the pieces don't shake with a dry rattle sound, because i followed instructions that said leathery was the target and i didn't want to leave them too long in case the utter dryness would deplete flavour.
AN IMPORTANT FACT i should add is that i sliced the peppers into at least 6-8 pieces each before dehydrating, to make dry time quicker but mostly to assess which pods were fresh/good to use. and i am doing the same with my ghosts this year (18 pods dried 2 weeks ago, 42 more picked and about to go in), cutting normal sized ones into 8 and larger/smaller ones accordingly to be uniformly sized.
so my question is, am i doing this properly or did my machine instructions leave something out? should i be leaving them longer to dry, or are others just being overly thorough? or is it a matter of choice, maybe does flavour factor in somewhere as to how long to leave it (fresh/flowery vs dry/smoky)? i quite like the hab powder i have, and it tastes fresh and powerful and in no way seems spoiled by being too moist and a year old. do i just keep on the way i've been doing, or are there some accepted rules/guidelines that you guys obey regarding safety/stability/flavour?
