Preserving Cayenne Peppers

We are making cayenne pepper flakes people.

Little red skinny peppers of hot fury. So grab some gloves and join me. It’s a super easy process.

When harvesting your peppers, you kind of want to wait until they are bright red and shriveled a little. That word is kind of weird to use but you don’t want to pick them right away, give them some time to morph into their hotness.

After harvesting you want to wash them the night before so that they are completely dry the next morning. Lay the dry peppers  on a cookie sheet lined with foil. They cannot touch each other, if they do, they won’t completely dry out.

Turn your oven to the lowest setting, mine is 200 degrees. And cook for as long as it takes to dry them out. These took 6 hours but my husband says I burnt them, oops, so just keep checking on them. Pinch them every now and then to see if they break easily. You’ll know when they are done.

Once dried out, place in a food processor and grind until they are little pepper flakes. And you are done my friends. ***A little tip though, try not to take a deep inhale when grinding this stuff. It goes right up your nose with no problem what so ever!

***And I just have one more piece of advice, do not say “F wearing gloves, I got this,” then forget that you are working with hot peppers and decide to wipe your ENTIRE face with your hands because it’s 100 degrees out and you are sweating like a hog. Yes, that is a run on sentence, I know.

Enjoy you little jar of ass burning goodness!

Happy cayenne peppering!