Smoking this years pepper crop

[OoPEZoO]

We had our first real frosts of the year the past two nights.  Couple that with perfect weather this weekend, and I figured it was a good time to destroy my garden and harvest my peppers. This year I grew jalapeños, scotch bonnets, and cayennes.  I already made jelly from the first batch of scotch bonnets, and I ran my cayennes through my dehydrator and ground them into powder.  I had been wanting to make home made chipotle peppers with the jalapeños, but it seems I could only manage to get 4-5 peppers to turn red at a time. At this point, I figured I would just smoke and dry whatever I had left.

I started with this


Washed them


Got the smoker together and started prepping the peppers


For heat and smoke I did things a little bit unorthodox. I had read about using a hot plate setup with a cast iron skillet instead of charcoal due to it being difficult to maintain 130-145F needed for drying peppers. So I tossed a hot plate on the charcoal grate with a CI skillet and a few chunks of hickory and mesquite. I then lightly tented the skillet with heavy duty foil and some holes punched in it. It looked like this


First rack of jalapeños split and placed in the smoker


Next, I flipped the grate from my Jumbo Joe, loaded it up, and placed it perpendicular to the lower grate


Then I moved onto the scotch bonnets.  I loaded up the top grate and another perpendicular 18 1/2" grate I had sitting around.


Within 15 minutes, the smoker was up to temp right where I wanted it. I did have to keep an eye on it though. The temps would climb to about 150F after about an hour, but that's also about the time I needed to add more smoke wood to the skillet. So I would open the door, pull the lid for a few seconds, place more wood under the foil, and button everything back up.  It would drop to about 130F and slowly start climbing again. At this point they have been on for about 9 hrs and I still haven't decided if I want to run it overnight yet. At this point, I think I might run it overnight and finish everything off in the dehydrator tomorrow. I'll follow up with the final results



Not a bad way to spend a beautiful afternoon

[TwinDr.]

That's cool.  I used to grow some of the world's hottest peppers for a local nursery.  There's no one here in Maine doing that so I did pretty well with them.  Loved your process.  Thanks for sharing.

[OoPEZoO]

Before I went to bed last night, I loaded up the CI skillet with a big load of wood.


The peppers were starting to show some good progress


This morning, I went down to check things out and the cooker temp had dropped overnight to 109F. Not a big deal in the grand scheme of things. The peppers looked great. The scotch bonnets looked like they were pretty much done at this point, but a few of them were still sticky and/or rubbery.


The jalapeños looked awesome. They were pretty much all still rubbery, but a quick taste test told me that they absorbed plenty of smoke flavoring and were still nice and hot.


At this point, I swapped everything over into the food dehydrator and kicked it on at 135F. I'll let them go till at least this afternoon and see how things work out. I'll probably have to pull the scotch bonnets by lunchtime and leave the jalapeños until this evening. Either way, I'm considering it a success. Next time around I think I will try it with charcoal and see if I can manage to keep the low temps


As another note, this was the first time using my smoker after installing a nomex gasket kit......and wow does it seal up tight now. The only places I had any smoke coming out was from the daisy wheel and the slot I have cut for my temp probes. The rest was tight as could be, not even any leakage around the door. I think that was money well spent, and makes me look forward to the next time I tackle ribs or pulled pork

[OoPEZoO]

I ran the dehydrator until about 8:00 last night and everything inside was nice and crispy.......the garage smelled AWESOME!

Final product
Mixture of smoked jalapenos and Scotch bonnets on the left, and regular dried cayennes on the right


I munched a few jalapenos while I was blending everything up, and they tasted great.  They had a nice smokey sweet flavor followed by some wicked burn.  I can't wait to add it to some recipes.

[Tim in PA]

That is awesome!

[HankB]

Very interesting! You'll probably have to season that cast iron but it looks like a good application. Do you know what wattage hot plate you had? It seems like something a little smaller would work better, no?

Nice to have a good seal on the WSM. I used a bead of high temp silicone on the lower joint of my 18 (on the middle section) and it made all the difference in tight temperature control.

[OoPEZoO]

The CI was a new Lodge pan I picked up on clearance a few weeks ago, so I figured I would end up properly seasoning it at some point anyway.  The hot plate was a cheapy 900W Oster I picked up at Walmart for under $20.  I tried to play with the heat setting on it to get the "sweet spot" of holding the proper temp and allowing the wood to smoke, but couldn't get it dialed in.  I could get one or the other, but not both.  Overall, it still worked much better than I ever would have expected.  For instance, the chunks of wood would start to smoke, then essentially turn to charcoal, then turn to ash.  It took probably 2-3 hours for each piece to go from solid wood to ash.  Before I loaded it up at night, I pulled the skillet out to dump the accumilated ash and it just brushed right out.  Same thing in the morning when I shut everything down.  Then I rinsed out the skillet with hot water and a sponge, dried it, and followed by a light coating of oil.  I'll see what it looks like when I get home tonight and decide if I want to really scrub it and season it from scratch.

[pbe gummi bear]

I love it, great work! How long do you think this crop will last you?

[OoPEZoO]

I honestly don't know.  I usually just froze my peppers at the end of a season and used them as needed until I had a fresh crop the following year.  This is the first time I've done anything else with them, and I'm excited at the added possibilities.  Having them in powder form should allow me to use more of them I hope.  I guess it will depend on how hot the results are.  I'm making pork chops tonight, and will experiment a little.  I LOVE hot stuff and use either spice or hot sauce in everything I eat.  My wife likes hot stuff to an extent, but steers clear of my hot wings and BBQ sauces.  My step daughter complains that my chicken is "too spicy" when I use nothing more than salt and pepper.  So using it all up might be a bit of a chore.  I'll also end up passing some on to a few select friends and coworkers.

[Weber MD]

Very interesting thread - thanks for posting.

[OoPEZoO]

I'll add this.......WOW it ended up HOT!

I put a little sprinkle into a bowl of chicken corn soup late last week, and some chili we made tonight. It has a great smokey flavor and has a ton of heat. I consider the whole project a complete success.

[Johnpv]

My girlfriend loves hot peppers, this has given me inspiration to get some peppers for her and do this.  Awesome looking stuff!

[Aawa]

That is awesome.  I have a few plants that I need to pick before it becomes too cold.  I normally just roast them off and peel/de-seed and then freeze them.

I might have to give this a try so I can make my own chile powder