A Favorite Idea for Peppers

It seems as if all of our peppers struggle mightily during the long summer days, wilting and not producing much at all.  As the days grow shorter and the temps fall off a bit, the peppers catch a second wind.  Suddenly, we are awash in peppers.  We're pickling (by lacto-fermentation) quart after quart of banana peppers.  We brought several baskets of banana peppers to give away at church as everyone likes pickling them.  We're dehydrating jalapenos and habaneros and grinding them into pepper.  We're making poppers with jalapenos and hot banana peppers.  We're dicing and freezing Anaheim peppers that Tricia uses to cook with.  In fact, the wife told me, "There's no sense in planting bell peppers anymore.  They haven't been producing well and Anaheims are better."

And then I went and checked on the bell peppers and there was a half dozen of them on the little bell pepper plant.  Well, what do you know?  They must have heard that they were fixing to be stricken from the planting rotation and quickly produced to save their spot.

 I brought them inside and we promptly cleaned them up and cored them.  We had an idea for supper tonight - something we hadn't done in a while: Stuffed Bell Peppers!  Tricia has a quick recipe that she puts together.  It's basically dirty rice, with a little tomato sauce added and then topped off with cheese, put in a baking pan and toss in the oven for a spell.  Some people like them topped with tomato paste/sauce, but we like cheese on top.  They turned out so good, we brought a couple to our son, Russ, who lives in a town about 10 miles away.  Russ loves peppers.  He said they are his favorite vegetable in the garden.

As is often the case, we had too much stuffing and not enough bell peppers.  So we did what anybody would do.  We made do with what we had on hand.  We have an abundance of beautiful Anaheim peppers on hand.  Anaheims will not stand up, so I just sliced them in half, making something sort of like a boat.  We spooned the stuffing into the Anaheim boats.  While bell peppers are sweet, Anaheims have a little heat, but not much.  Mild, I would call them.

The last few nights, the temperatures have dipped into the mid-30's.  The peppers will continue to produce until the freeze gets 'em.  For right now, we're still picking and finding delicious things to do with them.

Patricia Picked a Peck of Peppers

When I got in from work I didn't see Tricia and didn't know where she was until I went out and began filling the cow and goat water troughs with water.  Then I saw her.  She was in the garden with her baskets.  She came inside after a little bit with a nice-sized harvest of various peppers.  From October until December or the first freeze is our best time for pepper production.  Although we didn't weigh them, it's a pretty good haul.  We've already picked and eaten and pickled and dehydrated a bunch and there are a bunch more on the way.  This doesn't count the jalapenos.

This basket are our Hot Banana Peppers.  I have these planted in a row far from the others as I didn't want them crossing with the mild banana peppers.  These boogers will surprise you.  You expect them to be a regular banana pepper and bite into it and it's not!

These are the regular banana peppers.  They are mild and crunchy.  We have pickled (lacto-fermented) quarts and quarts of these this year with many more to go.  We like eating them as a side dish at lunch.

Here are the Anaheim Peppers.  We like cooking with these and often use them instead of bell peppers.  They have a little bite to them - not as hot as a jalapeno, but more spice than a sweet bell pepper.  They add some good flavor to the pot.

And here is a mystery pepper.  I think it is some sort of habenero cross.  It sends you scrambling for milk to put out the fire in your mouth!  We've resorted to dehydrating these and then grinding into a fine powder for making a homemade creole seasoning blend.  It's very good.  You just have to be careful that you don't overdo it.

The jalapenos should be producing more and more now.  We eat those as fast as we pull them.  The shishito peppers, a new variety we planted this year, were a big hit, and we enjoyed blistering them and eating with some lime juice and kosher salt with grated cheese on top.  Sadly, all three of the plants all died at the same time.  We'll definitely plant more of those this spring.

What are your favorite peppers?

Three Mile Island Pepper

Last week we showed you how we dehydrated jalapeno peppers and then ground it into pepper that we use to flavor dishes.  I used a lot of it today on top of some purple hull peas & sausage over white rice.  It added some flavor depth - hot, but not swell up your tongue and watery-eyes hot.

Our son, Russ, saw what we had done and wanted us to try to dehydrate and grind into ground pepper some of his peppers.  He had a very productive habanero pepper plant or two this year.  He put up four gallon-sized zip loc bags of habaneros in his freezer.  This week he brought over two of the four bags for us to process.  He had already cut them into rings so they'd fit better in the freezer.

We poured them onto the trays of the dehydrator while they were frozen and then used a fork to spread them out evenly so they would dry in a uniform fashion.

Pretty soon we had every rack filled.  We would have to do this in two separate batches.  I was a little concerned about them being frozen, buy they dried just the same.

The habaneros shrunk up to half its size in no time as all the water was removed in the drying process, leaving just the heat.

While hot and dry, Tricia put them into the food processer and gave it a whirl or two.  Here's the part where we wanted to be really careful.  That red dust in the air would be really painful to get in your eyes.  It also would not be pleasant to breathe it in.

Here's what a habanero looks like whole.  It's candy-apple red and has a pointed tail.

Two gallon-sized ziploc bags of peppers yielded this much ground habanero pepper.  We have two more to process and then we'll be done.

I haven't worked up the boldness to try this yet.  I can handle jalapenos.  I just don't think I could do habaneros.  These things are just really hot.  Radioactive hot.  I think we'll label this container, "Three Mile Island Pepper."  It'll put hair on your chest, for sure.