Drying Scotch Bonnet Peppers

This time of the summer is so hot that my outside labor is essentially done by ten or eleven in the morning. The rest of the day I am huddled in my workroom, or, such as today, staring at a computer monitor. That doesn’t mean that there isn’t outside work that I can’t do while I’m inside.

That would include dehydrating vegetables. My big pepper shaker full of dehydrated hot peppers has lost some of its zing since last year, and needed some help. When I saw these scotch bonnet peppers at the Festhalle, there was my answer.

Scotch bonnets are not to be trifled with. With a Scoville range of between 100,000 to 350,000 units, they are closing in on the blistering level. (Pepper sprays, for example, start at 2,000,000 Scoville.) Therefore, I wore gloves when I cut these in half and removed the stems and seeds. Then I threw them into the drying tray, and put them in our dehydrater.

After a couple of hours of drying without much result, and of thinking of how much carbon pollution was being produced by Alabama Power, at the same time, I decided to switch gears. Out to the solar panels they went.

The peppers were propped up on clay pot feet supports for around a total of 18 hours, spread out over three days. The air circulation helped create the crunchy feel that a well dried pepper has, and these are the best I have seen. The only thing left to do is to grind them, and bring out the pizza.