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preservation drying habeneros

M

mgianino74

im getting ready to throw some habs in the dehydrator for the first time. does this create a burning odor? do I need to do it outside?
 
Agreed, no burning odour, but the smell might 'irritate' other members of the family, especially those not particularly fond on hot peppers, but as soon as you're done with the drying the smell will dissipate within a couple of hours. I run my dehydrator on the window sill just because it has a noisy fan.
 
Cut the peppers in half...... you will reduce a lot your drying time (you can harvest seed and make them dry at room temp)
 
I freeze mine before drying also. When you slice a frozen pod, there's no risk of oil splash. Also, I've heard because freezing ruptures the cell walls, it allows them to dry more quickly. Not sure how true that is though. I turned 12oz of fresh peppers into 1.5oz dried this week in about 14 hours.
 
if you have a wife/ family in the house definitely do it outside... I was almost murdered when I tried dehydrating a couple super pods when everyone was complaining that they couldn't breath saves alot of hassle just to do it outside
 
I've been averaging 12.5% dried weight lately. This means 1lb fresh = 2oz dry. There will always be a bit of variation depending on the thickness of the pod flesh and whether you de-seed them. I'm shooting for 2lb of powder this year, which by this rule of thumb means I've gotta dry 16lb of fresh peppers. Between my 22 plants, I'm hoping this is semi-realistic.
 
P.S. - My wife considers dehydrating peppers while she's home grounds for divorce due to the eye sting. Luckily I work 6am-6pm and she works 6pm-6am so I get at least one day a week to run the dehydrator.
 
ooh. gotta try freezing the pods prior to dehydrating them. 

While on the subject, do y'all deseed your peppers before powder? Do you do it before or after dehydrating them?
 
oh, and I definitely second the motion to do it outside or in the garage if there are other members of the household that do not like peppers. 
 
I deseed until I have 100+ healthy looking ones to share and regrow, then grind the rest in with them. Just a matter of personal preference. I forget what the drying temperature limit is to preserve viability, but I would imagine if you go too far over 100F, they're unlikely to sprout. If you freeze your pods before deseeding, the seeds are already non-viable.
 
Sooooo.... If I wanted to smoke a bunch of habs in my electric smoker, what temperature should I set it to, and how long should it take? I'm guessing all day....
 
Scarlet Fire said:
I deseed until I have 100+ healthy looking ones to share and regrow, then grind the rest in with them. Just a matter of personal preference. I forget what the drying temperature limit is to preserve viability, but I would imagine if you go too far over 100F, they're unlikely to sprout. If you freeze your pods before deseeding, the seeds are already non-viable.
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Alrighty. Thanks for the info Scarlet

I usually take all the seeds I need\want from the first batch of peppers then dry the rest with seeds still in the pods. After drying, I scrape all the seeds out and grind the rest into powder. However, this process is fairly time consuming and just wondering if there was a good reason\explanation for seeds in vs.out.
 
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