Cayenne Pepper from the Garden

After harvesting tons of hot peppers from the garden, we hang some of them up to dry by threading with a standard needle and thread. You can poke the needle through each pepper at the very top sometimes through the green stem or right underneath the stem.  When all threaded hang them up for several weeks until they become completely dry and wrinkly, just make sure to pick a dark dry area.

When your peppers are dried they store well in a glass container or plastic bag for months even years as long as you don’t let moisture get to them at all.

This harvest we decided to grind a number of cayenne  peppers into fine cayenne powder. You can grind peppers a little at a time until you reach the desired consistency for example for a coarse grind (just a couple of pulses) will give you hot pepper flakes.  A few more pulses will give you a much finer powder. The Cuisinart SG-10 Electric Spice-and-Nut Grinder  is the grinder we use. 

Transfer powder into a spice jar of your choosing.  Just to let you know our homemade cayenne pepper powder is much spicier than store bought powder.

If you have a variety of hot peppers you want to grind thats fine just make sure those peppers have been thoroughly dried, you can use any variety to make hot pepper flakes or powder.

Wearing gloves is alway a good idea when handling multiple hot peppers.