Dried Chilis (Serranos)

Hello, world, I'm back.  Just in time for the holidays!  And just in time to set some goals for 2012, like blogging regularly again.

So let's dive right in.  My garden was planted late, and as such, there came a date when I had to face the fact of winter and just pick everything that was edible.  That included a few serrano pepper plants that gifted me with a whole slew of peppers.  And while I do love serranos, I do not love a whole slew of them at once.  Freezing was a solution, but it wasn't my favorite.  So I turned to the internets for options.

Here's what I've got for you.  You can dry peppers.  You can do it in different ways.  Since I don't live in a hot, sunny, dry climate, I went with the next best (read: easiest) thing.  An oven!

So, put your oven on a low heat (around 200* should be fine) and add a panful of peppers.  This is going to take some time, so plan on hanging out and getting stuff done around the house.  I checked on them and flipped them about every half hour.

Since this was the product of a garden purge, I had some pretty baby peppers in there.  They were done after about three hours.  The bigger ones took upwards of four hours to dry.  The not-quite-done ones are still soft, you know the peppers are done when you squeeze them and they pop or crack, sort of like a peanut shell.

It's also worth noting that the peppers shrink when they dry.  So a panful of serranos turned into a small jarful of dried peppers.  Use them for anything!  Crush them over pizza, put them in a pot of chili, or my personal favorite, Mexican mole.  More on that later.

So welcome me back!  And give me more ways to use my dried peppers :)