Drying Peppers (and a review of our new vacuum sealer)

Yesterday we picked a peck of frost-wrecked peppers.  What to do with them all? We cooked some of them.  We chopped and froze some more and today we'll dehydrate some peppers.  I like to diversify our storage methods to offer some 'insurance' in the event we lose power and as a result, lose everything in our freezer. That would not be good.

Dehydrating offers another method of preserving the harvest and a way to hold the fruits of your labor in a shelf-stable way.  Drying peppers is easy.  I guess the most time consuming part of the task is slicing the peppers to a 1/4 inch thickness.  I washed up the peppers, got out a knife and the cutting board and got busy.

Slicing Peppers

Once sliced to the appropriate thickness of 1/4 inch, we arranged them on the drying racks in the food dehydrator.  You can see the green color of the peppers as well as the red color and the deep brown color of the chocolate peppers.

Arranged on the drying racks and ready to dry

We set the dehydrator on the Vegetable Setting which blows air at a temperature of about 135 degrees Fahrenheit and turned it on.  According to the directions, you let it blow for anywhere between 4 and 12 hours or until the peppers feel "leathery." Here is a tray of leathery peppers all dried after staying in the dehydrator overnight. These dried peppers can be added to soups, gravies, or any other dish. They are packed with flavor and once re-hydrated and cooked, make a great addition to your meal.

Dehydrated Peppers

And that's all there is to it.  Except for, of course, storage.  You just have to make sure that the peppers are kept airtight and you can store them on a shelf in your pantry for whenever you are ready to cook with them.

This is a perfect opportunity to showcase our new vacuum-sealer.  This unit was relatively inexpensive and was easily to assemble.  It is an energy star appliance that actually uses no electric or hydrocarbon-based energy to operate.  Let's take a look at the vacuum sealer.  All you do is put the dehydrated peppers in a Ziploc bag and seal it tight except for one side on the end.  Insert a drinking straw and seal the ziploc seal tightly around the straw.

The Vacuum Pro Sealer XL

To operate the sealer one must put the straw into your mouth and inhale.  Hold the ziploc bag tightly around the straw and suck deeply.  This action turns the sealer on and you can observe the air being evacuated from the ziploc bag.  Once there is no more air to suck out of the bag, while you are still sucking on the straw, quickly pull the straw out of the bag and simultaneously seal the ziploc bag completely, preserving the vacuum.

Powering up the Seal-A-Meal

And there you have it, folks.  One tightly sealed bag of dehydrated peppers.  The bag is labeled and dated and will be stored in our pantry until ready for use in Tricia's kitchen.

The Finished Product

Our vacuum sealer is useful and comes recommended highly.  A few users of this product have complained about the lack of the bag to hold a vacuum, but that is more a function of a poor airlock on the bag and not a poor reflection on the operator of the sealer, also known as the sucker.  Ha Ha.