Works great! IMO, easier than messing with skin and seed removal from the fresh peppers.

I'm confoosled. So you dry the peppers, grinf them, then reconstitute with water or vinegar? Is that shelf stable?

I am thinking that i will use a combination of vinegar and water. We'll see how it goes.

Thanks for the input tsheets. I'm happy to know that you've been successful with it.

I don't actually reconstitute them. All you're doing with dehydrating them is removing the water and making them brittle.

When you make the sauce, you just add the powder and whatever liquid (it is going to be a sauce, after all) / ingredients you wish.

One thing I should note, I don't use a recipe designed specifically to be shelf safe. I just make it up as I go and make small batches of 2-3 bottles so they get used within a couple of months and store them in the fridge. But, there is no reason you couldn't focus on the ph level for shelf storage.

Absolutely. For the first time, I have a lot of different hot peppers this year and purchased a dehydrator to dry them. Once they were dry (super chili's, thai hot, african mound, jalapeno, serano, cayennes, etc..), I couldn't figure out what to do with them ( I am no where near as advanced as others on the board )...so I purchased a coffee grinder and pulverized them. Once I had little pots of powder, I started mixing the different powders and putting in bottles. I added salt, cumin, garlic powder and onion powder to some pots. Finally, I poured a boiling mixture of vinegar and water (2 parts vinegar / 1 water) into the bottles, shook 'em up and put them in the fridge.

So far, the different bottles taste amazing. Looking forward to really kicking it up with some Bhut's once they rippen.

Disclosure: I don't know what else I can do with all these peppers...I am scared of leaving the powder in powder form simply because I am not convinced my dehydrating efforts are as effective as I need them to be.

If you are using vinegar (helps keep the sauce stable) and making a liquid form, why not ladle it into canning jars and hot water bath the jars? I do this and my sauce lasts for years. Just a thought.

I'm drying my Habs, Bananas and Cherry Peppers right now. I plan on grinding them up and adding salt, (maybe sugar), a bit of distilled water and/or whey and some powdered kefir starter. I've never tried this before, but I imagine the results will be similar to this thread. I suggest reading the entire thread as it contains a lot of good information.

Here is a link that might be useful: kefir discussion

We just freeze our extra peppers and tomatoes then thaw them when we need to make more hot sauce. They easily last til we have more grown the next year.

andy....Thought I'd let you know that, accoding to the New Mexico St. Institute of Hot Peppers, the seeds dont have any heat in them. The white membrain on the inside of the pepper is where all the capsaicin is in the peppers.

I would also suggest you make a BBQ sauce with your peppers also. If you still have to many, try seling some at a farmers market, or simply zip-lock them and freeze away through the winter!

Good luck sir!!!

Andy, red enchilada sauce is made with dried ground peppers, so using ground dried pepper is a well established way to make sauce from peppers.

If you are not canning your hot sauce, only make what you will eat in about a week. If you have the dried ground peppers, it will only take you seconds to make the next batch when you are ready to use it.

Grantsi, dried peppers are safe to store but lose their flavor if stored too long at room temperature. They can spoil after they are re-hydrated, so don't rehydrate unless you are either eating soon or canning..

I suggest that you dry your peppers and grind them, put them into labeled storage containers and keep them in the freezer. You can store the dried chili pods whole or as ground chili powder.