Holy Roasted Jalapeno (and into the Dehydrator with you!)
A lot of people are surprised that you can (or would think of) roasting something like a hot pepper before dehydrating it. Many hot-pepper fans are familiar with a chipotle (essentially a dried smoked jalapeno) and when you connect the two ideas, the concept of drying something that you’ve roasted doesn’t seem nearly as foreign.
We’ve shared a lot about drying hot peppers before:
This year we’re trying to perfect out approach to dehydrating roasted peppers (we are using jalapenos). The ones we made last year were fire-and-brimstone spicy but they essentially looked like sheets (or the thinnest vegetable ‘leather’ you can imagine). They were full of flavor and full of heat but they looked a lot like bats. Yes, bats (photos in the first link above).
The biggest modification to our approach can be seen in the photo: we are roasting the peppers with their tops on. I used to cheat and chop the tops off (they roasted faster) but I was left with a sheet that was tasty but tough to store.
The second significant modification is our use of temperature. In the past we used a moderate heat and shut the lid. We now turn the heat as hot as it will go and are constantly vigilant, turning, monitoring and looking for the skin to just start to blister and char before turning. If you wait too long, the pepper will char throughout which creates that ‘lovely’ bat-like color. By just blistering the skin you will leave the inner flesh in tact (although it will darken in the drying process).
Note that cooking this many can also make breathing a little difficult if you’re not carefull. If it’s a windy day, stand up wind from the smoke. If it’s relatively still, try to avoid placing your head over the peppers when flipping them to avoid inhaling smoke or just the spicy fumes created by the process.
Once the peppers are removed from the heat I put them in a sealed container (a pot will do) to cool and sweat. This will make the skins easier to remove and easier to handle.
When I remove the skins, I wear gloves. This quantity of hot peppers is enough to cause some serious pain that will stick around for days (rubbing your hands with olive oil can help reduce this pain). Jalapenos often are more stubborn than a typical bell pepper (their skin and flesh can both be thinner and don’t separate as easy). Don’t drive yourself wild – take what easily comes off and leave the rest.
Finally we chop the end off (this facilitates drying) and either dehydrate whole or cut once to have halves. They enter the dehydrator around 125 degrees and, with proper spacing, should be done in 12-18 hours.
We’ll share the results - and what to do with them – before long!
If you’re looking for more ideas about hot peppers:
- How to cook with dehydrated Hot Peppers
- Our complete series of posts dedicated to Hot Peppers and different types from around the world
- How to ferment hot peppers
Comments
Hmmm too spicy for me I think. How do you eat these? Surely not by snacking on them whole – or maybe you have an iron tongue.
Heya oneJuniper – there’s a link at the bottom on how to cook with them – that will show you how we do it (indeed not whole)
They are fantastic and I use them all the time. 
I am going to save this for next year. I do not have enough peppers left to try this with. But I will have to figure out how to do it in the oven since I live in an apartment.
I loooove the pic of the jalapenos roasting! I love jalapenos.
I’ve been wanting to try roasted jalapenos for several years. I’m thinking it’s about time to join the cool kids table.
[...] sharing the recipe, a note about the heat. We used our homemade dehydrated roasted jalapenos. We turn them into a powder before adding them to the nuts. These are not your Papa`s jalaepnos [...]