How to Make Dehydrator Chili Powder from Hot Peppers

My husband loves hot and spicy food so much he started adding hot chili peppers to our container garden even though they are too hot for me to eat.

It’s fine by me. Like they say, you are what you eat and that’s why my husband is hot!

Since our apache, Tabasco, and habanero peppers plants are service for one, I need to find a way to preserve the spicy hot pepper goodness.  You can can hot peppers but you risk comprising the heat because you have to can the peppers in vinegar.

And that won’t do.

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The best way to preserve hot peppers and keep the heat intact is to dehydrate them. Then you have the option of rehydrating the pepper when you want to eat it or use the dry peppers to make spicy hot chili powder.

How to Make Chili Powder from Hot, Chili, Jalapeno, Apache, or Habanero Peppers the Easy Way!

You may want to wear kitchen gloves while you are handling the hot peppers and powder to protect your skin from the oil in the peppers.



You will need:

Clean, fresh chili peppers – use your favorite. In this example I am using homegrown Apache Peppers

Knife, throw in a cutting board for kicks too

Dehydrator – I have a Nesco dehydrator that I love!

Clean a Screen dehydrator tray liners – optional but highly recommended! They make cleaning my dehydrator trays so much easier/

Blender or food processor

Disclosure: There are affiliate links in this post for your convenience.


How to make it:


1. Remove the pepper stems if you haven't done this already and use the knife to slice the peppers if desired. You can remove the seeds if you wish or keep the seeds intact to add more heat to your dried hot peppers.

Apache hot peppers!

I’m keeping the seeds intact.

2. Dry the Apache peppers in the dehydrator at 145 degrees (F) for 6 -12 hours until the hot peppers are crisp, tough, or brittle.

Feeling Hot! Hot! Hot!

Your drying time will depending upon if you sliced the chili peppers (I didn’t,)  the temperature and humidity in your house (late summer is humid here so things take a little longer to dry,) and the amount of peppers you are dehydrating. You can speed the drying time by rotating the trays every four hours if you like.


3.When the hot peppers are toughly dry, grind the peppers into a powder using a blender or food processor.

Or you can store your dehydrated hot peppers whole in an airtight container. I use a repurposed glass jar because I don't want a plastic container to absorb hot pepper oils. 

 

4. Store the chili powder in an airtight container (I use a repurposed empty glass jar) to use for later!

Hot spicy goodness!

 
I love how my dehydrator is such an easy and space saving way to "can" food!


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