dehydrator and other chile stuff-2015

[salsalady]

Once again, the local farmers got me.  50 pounds of green jalapenos and about 110 pounds of red jalapenos.  And more on the way in a couple more weeks....
 
Luckily,  the pods are pretty good sized so it went failry quickly.
 

 
I brought back the old chopper because it had a large shredder plate the new chopper didn't have.

 
In the past, I've ground and frozen the jalapenos for the salsa.  This year, the peppers will all be dried.  We need to free up some space in the freezer and make things easier for the salsa process.
 
I wanted the red jalapenos for making a jalapeno seasoning salt and for a sriracha sauce. I inherited my mom's dehydrator (time to Double-Down ) , but forgot to get plumbing PVC for the spacers.  So I grabbed a bunch of Sch40 couplings from the work truck, washed them and wrapped in plastic wrap just as a precaution. 

 
The spacers are lined up on each rack to distribute the weight onto the spacers and not onto the plastic racks.  The spacers probably quadruple the amount of product that can be dried on each rack.  For one rack, there was about 4 pounds of shredded chiles on it.  You can buy white PVD plumbing couplings which are fine for food contact.  The electrical PVC couplings are probably the same, but I wasn't sure so I wrapped them in plastic wrap.  Eventually I'll get some more white PVD cut pieces, but I was in a bind to get things drying right now.   
 
I put a jar over the center hole while filling the trays to keep stuff from falling down the middle onto the air flow vent hole.

 
Wrap it all up with cling wrap and get it all HappyHappyHappy

 
 

 
Last photo shows the ferment started on a hot plate to keep it warm.  I have the vent hood on in the kitchen to get the moisture from the dehydrators out and that is keeping the temp of the room down a bit.  Using the hot plate to keep the fermentation crock warm.
 
I checked the dehydrator this morning and after 12 hours at 100F it's abut 50% dry.
 
 
 
 

 

[sirex]

I live seen posts and pics of your processes!

 

[salsalady]

  Thanks sirex...
 
what can I say, I'm inherently lazy~~~ 

 

[tsurrie]

Wow, that's a great amount of jalapenos... Interesting technique.... they dry fast you say?

 

[salsalady]

Yes, they should be dry in 24 hours.  We live in a (usually) dry climate.  We had a rain storm come through last night, first one in months, and today the sun is out.  Weather for the rest of the week does not call for any more rain, so the humidity should be pretty low and the chiles should be drying pretty fast.  For this batch, it may be 36 hours.
 
I keep the dehydrator temp low (100F) to keep the color of the dried peppers.  Hotter drying temps will make them dry faster but will darken the color of the peppers.  With our usually dry climate the lower temps work.  In areas of higher humidity, the chiles may need to be dried at a higher temp to get them to dry in a timely manner.
 
 
Hopefully this inspires others to think outside the boxes and figure out ways to make it bigger-better-faster-easier.

 

[Alynne]

Impressive!

 

[AJ Drew]

That is an amazingly ingenious way to stretch the space in your dehydrator.  I am curious about 100 deg. setting.  I thought produce needed 135 degrees.  I am sure you are processing further, so I dont think the temperature matters for health reasons but wonder if you are going a bit low to preserve colors, flavor, or another attribute.  At 135, they seem to loose a great deal of color.

BTW: Mason jar to keep stuff out the hole is so right there that I am kicking myself for never thinking about it.  I really love the way you do things.  Feels more like home than the factory setting that the huge producers use.

 

[Alynne]

I don't dry commercially, but have found that my lowest oven setting is 170. I bring it to temp, leave the peppers for 20 min or so and turn it off. Cycle again in an hour or so. Wouldn't work for your volume, but works for small batches.

 

[salsalady]

aj~ I can usually dry fast enough that the low temp setting and health concerns are not an issue.  In places with higher humidity, it would probably have to have a higher temp to get everything dry fast enough.  For the mason jar, any small glass, cup or jar will work.  Past batches have been with larger pieces of sliced chiles, so it wasn't as much of a concern, but I still ended up fishing pieces of pepper off the air inlet.  With all the small pieces and knowing I wanted to stuff the trays, I thought covering the center hole and then skootching the peppers out from the middle after the tray was loaded was a good option.  And it did work great!   
 
Alynne- making due with what you have.  Great way to work it.    
 
I'm headed out to check on  everything in a few minutes~
 
 
Also- I used a solid tray liner on the bottom tray to catch all the liquids and then the rest of the spaced out trays had a small mesh liner.  I ran out of the mesh liners so the top few trays had solid liners stacked straight on top of each other (no spacers).  Those trays were not stuffed. 

 

[geeme]

Just for old-times sake:
 

Yes, they should be dry in 24 hours.  We live in a rain shadow, so have extremely low humidity.

 
  It's still true!
 
 
 
I am kind of wishing I could get that many pounds of aji cristals right now. Kind of, though, as I am feeling lazy ATM. On the other hand, I love your creative innovation and am glad it worked out well enough for you to use again. Cool!

 

[salsalady]

  nice edit, geeme! 
 
The shadow lifted last night and it poured.  Or is it- the shadow was in place and it rained????
I still don't get that whole shadow thing...it's all backwards~~~     

 

[geeme]

Nah, try thinking of it this way: When you stand outside on a sunny day, your body blocks the sun, casting a shadow on the ground. Although not entirely true (due to reflection), light can't get to the place where the shadow exists because your body is in the way. So shadows are always caused by something blocking something else. In your area's case, the mountains (typically) block the rain, so the rain can't (usually) get to your place because the mountains are in the way. Hence, you live in a rain shadow.
 
It sounds kind of odd when you first encounter the term, because we don't say "light shadow" or "sun shadow" - everybody pretty much knows that one is referring to light being blocked when the word "shadow" is used alone. Since that is the most common use, other shadows use a qualifier along with the word "shadow."

 

[AJ Drew]

OK smarty pants, tell us what a moon shadow is.  The damn thing keeps following me, leaping n hopping n stuff... What is a moon shadow?

 

[salsalady]

^^^