What to do With an Abundance of Hot Peppers

We love hot peppers and grow a bunch of them every year.  This year someone offered us some free hot banana peppers - five plants, actually.  We have the normal jalapenos and anaheims that we normally grow.  We had a strange arrival, too.  One of the seeds that was in the shishito package was NOT a shishito pepper.  It was a brilliant orange pepper and this bad boy was hot.  So what do you do with a bunch of peppers that are too hot to just eat plain?

Well, we'll show you what we do.  First we enjoy the electric colors of the hot peppers.  Makes a pretty basket, doesn't it?

Then, after washing them, I cut them in half and removed the seeds and the ribs.  This is the point at which you want to remember NOT to touch your eyes or your face.  Not even after washing your hands.  Ask me how I know!

Load onto the rack of the dehydrator and put on the 'vegetable mode' and run that baby until the peppers are shriveled up and dried completely.

Then we put the dried peppers in the food processor and run until the peppers have been ground into, well, ground pepper.  I wish you could smell this!  Wonderful, rich, aromatic!  Sprinkle just a dash onto your food and it livens up the dish nicely.

We always make Emeril's Essence Seasoning using the following RECIPE.  If you click that link, it will bring you to the recipe.  In place of the 1 tablespoon of cayenne pepper, we substituted our mystery hot orange pepper.  We'll call it Emeril's Very Hot Essence!  We'll be making a lot more as out pepper supply seems limitless this year.  That's a good problem to have.  Stay spicy, my friends!