How to Smoke Peppers - How to Make Smoked Chilli Flakes at Home
Author: Whats4Chow
Recipe type: Smoking / Drying
Smoked chilli flakes add a whole new flavor to your food while also adding the heat. I am using Jalapeños, but you can use and peppers of your choice. To Provide the smoke, I am using the Smoke Daddy Vortex.
Ingredients
- Jalapeño peppers
- 20ml Bicarbonate of soda
- 1 lt Water
Instructions
- Dissolve 20ml of bicarbonate of soda in a liter of cold water. The chillis will be soaked in this solution the preserve their color. Green and red chillis will darken as they smoke and dry, but will retain their characteristic color instead of turning an unsightly black.
- To prepare the peppers, cut of the stems and quarter them length-ways. Transfer the peppers to the bicarb solution and allow them to soak for 5 minutes.
- Drain the chillis and transfer them to stainless steel mesh sieves or spatter screens.
- A while back, I unboxed and introduced the Vortex passive smoke generator. This is what we're using today.
- Place the peppers on the right hand side of your barbecue, and the Vortex smoker near the center. Use your blow torch or a heat gun to set the Vortex smoking. In addition ignite the left hand side burner.
- Aldo note the probe thermometer on the right hand side. This helps to monitor the target temperature of 67c or 153f.
- Let the peppers smoke for a total of 4 hours.
- Remove the peppers from the barbecue. You will notice that they have shriveled significantly, but are not totally dried.
- At this stage, you can store the chillis in oil, or continue with the drying process by placing the peppers in an oven at 67c or 153f until totally dried. This can take anything from 4 to 10 hours.
- Once totally desiccated, chop the chillis into flakes and store indefinitely in an airtight container.
