As part of our farm share this summer, we got some cayenne peppers. I had never grown cayenne peppers and really didn’t know what to do with them. I don’t think that many of our fellow farm sharers knew what to do with them either because instead of rationing them out like all the other produce, they were in a box that said “help yourself”. So, I took a bunch……about 200. I did a little research and realized that there were two things that we eat pretty regularly that are made from cayenne peppers……crushed red pepper flakes and Frank’s Red Hot sauce (see separate post for this).
I looked at the ingredients on the bottle of the crushed red pepper in our pantry and saw “May Contain Milk, Wheat, Soy”……say what??
Making our own was super easy. I cleaned about 100 of them and cut off the stems. I did not remove any seeds. I tried to make them all the same size. I cut the larger ones in half and left the little ones whole. I put them all on a cookie sheet and put them in the oven on the lowest setting (170 degrees). I left them in the oven for about 5 hours and then I turned off the oven and let them sit in there overnight.
In the morning, I pulsed them in the food processer and put them in a shaker jar. 100 cayenne peppers only filled up one 3 oz. jar. We ended up using some on our meal at lunchtime. They were so much fresher tasting (and spicier!) than the store brand that I usually buy. We are planning on planting cayenne peppers next year so that we can make a much larger batch of this.
