Thursday, August 7, 2008

Using Dried Chili Peppers

Have you been tempted by the strange-looking dried chili peppers in your grocery store, but intimidated by the lack of information on what to do with them if you bought them? Or have you been seduced by one or more of these exotic dried chilies and brought them home, only to have them leaving you frustrated and unsatisfied in the kitchen? Don't worry, I'm here to help with some tips on using dried chili (or chile) peppers!

Buy dried peppers online
First, while all dried chilies are... well... wrinkled and old-looking, you still need to know how to avoid the bad ones. Stick to dried peppers that have somewhat shiny skins with dark red or maroon or deep brown or black-brown color, have long uniform pods and are free from signs of mold or decay. Also avoid ones that look gnarled or withered, as opposed to merely crinkly or wrinkled. You can store dried chile peppers in a cool dry place for around 6 months, or for longer in an airtight container in your freezer. Before using, make sure to remove any dust or surface dirt by either wiping the dried peppers with a paper towel or rinsing them with water.

In general, you'll need to rehydrate dried chili peppers before using them in most recipes. An exception is when you want to add dried chile peppers to stews, soups, casseroles or moist meat mixtures that will cook for at least half an hour. In those applications, you can just go ahead and add dried chopped peppers directly without rehydrating them, since the moisture and long cooking time will do the job for you. Some recipes might also recommend toasting dried chile peppers as a first step, to intensify their flavor. You can toast dried peppers by placing them in a roasting pan in the oven (set around 350 degrees or so) for a few minutes, or using a hot, dry heavy skillet on the stove and pressing the dried peppers down to toast each side for a few minutes. Either way, check the peppers regularly to prevent burning, which can give them an unpleasant bitterness.

Buy dried ancho chilies
If you're concerned about how hot the dried chile peppers might be, you can slit them open and remove the seeds (shake them out or brush them away) prior to rehydrating or toasting. Alternatively, you can rehydrated them first to soften, and then cut open and use the tip of a knife to get rid of the seeds and stems. Kitchen shears can be quite helpful in slicing dried or rehydrated chile peppers.

Once you're ready to rehydrate the peppers, place them in a bowl and pour very hot water over the dried peppers to cover. If the chilies won't stay submerged, place a saucer or other lid over the bowl to hold them down. Soak the dried chiles for at least half an hour, and ideally for 1 hour. You'll notice that the peppers will have softened and swelled, and that some of their original color will have been restored. Drain off the soaking water, saving some of it if your recipe calls for pureeing the rehydrated chilies. Cut off any stems, cut open and remove seeds if desired, and then chop or slice as called for by your recipe. If pureeing, puree the rehydrated chiles in a food processor or blender using some of the soaking water. You can then press the puree through a sieve to remove any unwanted seeds or to get a finer texture.

Some of the more common dried chili peppers include the Ancho, which is very wide especially towards the stem end (ancho means wide in Spanish), deep dark red or maroon in color, and mild to medium hot; Pasilla, which is long and of the same relatively narrow width for the entire length of the body, with a dark brown color and very hot; Chipotle, which is a smoked, dried jalapeno, brown in color and hot to very hot with smoky flavor; De Arbol, which is small and very slender, intense red in color and resembles a dried cayenne pepper but its skin is less wrinkled.

You can make a simple but potent chili sauce for tacos and enchiladas by pureeing rehydrated chilies (a combination of Ancho and Pasilla works well) with some of the soaking water, a clove of garlic and a pinch of salt. You can also add a bit of oregano and cumin for a more complex flavor.

So don't fear the dried chiles in your produce section - bring some home, and discover a whole new world of intensely zesty, pungent and spicy flavors!

Zestfully yours,
Gloria
Carolina Sauce Company

PS:  If you're an experienced chili pepper handler and eater who enjoys fiery foods, check out our new dried jolokia pepper (ghost pepper) pods, now on sale at the Carolina Sauces online store!


29 comments:

  1. I am looking for some recipes. Have any ideas?

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  2. Hi there,

    Thanks for reading my blog! Are you looking for recipes specifically using dried chili peppers? If so, do you have a particular kind of dried chili in mind, or types of recipes (e.g., main course, vegetarian, meat, pasta etc)? With a little more info, I can probably point you in the right direction...

    -Gloria

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  3. I am seeking great hot sauce recipes without anything acidy like vinegar or lime. There is a small chain calle Alberto's that makes a great sauce. I am trying to figure what are the best peppers to use for great flavor.

    Joe B.

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  4. Hi Joe,

    Thanks for reading my blog! If you're going to make a hot sauce for immediate consumption (rather than bottling or storing in your fridge), you can probably get away without using any acid ingredients such as vinegar or lemon juice, BUT if you want to make a hot sauce that you can store in your fridge, you'll need the acidity to keep it from spoiling.

    If going for the fresh hot sauce without acidity, I'd recommend a combination of 2 or more fresh and dried peppers that you enjoy, and that have different flavor notes and heat effects (i.e., immediate sharp burn vs. delayed mellower burn), and perhaps also a smoked dried pepper as well if you like smoky flavors. Puree them with a little water for the consistency you want, and add some Kosher salt to enhance the flavors. You might also want to add a little garlic powder if you like garlic, or perhaps cilantro or fresh lemongrass for herbal notes. I personally find that adding just a little bit of a milder acid such as fresh lemon juice, orange juice or rice wine vinegar can produce great results without making the homemade hot sauce too acidic.

    I hope this helps!
    -Gloria

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    1. Hi Gloria,

      Great blog! Its filled with useful info...I have a question in regards to this particular topic, though. My parents traveled to Italy and brought me back a bag of Peperoncino Piccante. I love using hot sauces and alrso enjoy using bottled hot chili peppers which usually come in a salted water/vinegar mixture. I am wondeing if I can use the dried chili peppers that I now have to either make a hot sauce or just bottle the rehydrated chili peppers and store them in my fridge for later use. Do you have any ideas or recipes for doing either of those things?

      Thank you very much for your help!

      - Dario

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    2. Hi Dario,
      Great question! Although I personally haven't made hot sauce with dried chilies, I do sell quite a few hot sauces that are made with dried as well as fresh chilies. I think for a hot sauce you probably should rehydrate the peppers first, then drain & blend together with the fresh peppers and whatever acid you're using as a base for the hot sauce (e.g., vinegar, lemon juice, citric acid, etc.). I wouldn't recommend rehydrating to store in the fridge, because the peppers won't last as long and will probably lose potency faster than if you simply stored them dry in an airtight container in your pantry or other dark, cool place. They can last a LONG time with excellent flavor when dried & stored properly. I hope that helps, and please feel free to share any recipes or tips once you start using the dried Peperoncino Piccante.

      Thanks for reading my blog and taking the time to comment!
      Zestfully yours,
      Gloria

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  5. Thanks for describing how it works - I got about 7 different kinds of dried chilies and was indeed afraid to approach them. Now I have two different kinds soaking in hot water according to your instructions and am looking forward to making a chili sauce out of each and testing which works better in my texas chili.

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  6. Hi J,

    You're welcome, glad I could help! Let us know how your chili sauces and Texas chili turn out - and if you want to share your recipes, please do so.

    Thanks for reading my blog, and have fun playing with dried chilies in the kitchen.

    Gloria

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  7. This is awesome, helps immensely with how to use dried peppers. Found this page because I am planning to make Mexican Chili Con Carne from scratch this weekend but will now also try making some cot sauces :)

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  8. Wowsa! I just purchased the following dried peppers: Guajillo Chili Pods, New Mexico chili pods, and Arbol chlli's . Any suggestions what do do with these?

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    1. Hi Kuby,
      Those are excellent chiles for many different uses! Guajillo peppers will be in the middle in terms of heat, comparable with jalapenos. They're very common in all sorts of Mexican dishes, adding the perfect balance of flavor and heat to sauces, meats, chicken and marinades, and even added to salsas when rehydrated & chopped. You can also use the milder New Mexico and the hotter de Arbol chiles in Mexican food as well as Tex-Mex and Southwestern fare - huevos rancheros come to mind.

      The New Mexicos are the mildest (they're the dried form of Anaheim peppers, as you may already know), and are a good choice to add a little zip to red sauces. Arbol (aka "de arbol") chiles are the hottest of the 3, comparable to cayennes in heat and can be used in the same manner as cayennes (a great choice for homemade hot sauce). They have a rich, subtly smoky flavor and can be used in non-Mexican spicy cuisines, including Thai foods.

      If you want to try your hand at a very easy, quick bread recipe (no yeast or rising time) that uses dried chiles, check out my Chile-Cheddar Beer bread recipes here and here. Please let us know how you end up using your peppers, and how you liked them - and thanks for reading my blog!

      Zestfully yours,
      Gloria

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  9. After soaking the dried peppers in hot tap water for two hours (submerged with a plate to keep them under water), I pureed them in a food processor with water. No matter how long I processed them, the sauce ended up with small, tough pieces of chile skin. The peppers had been very hard, crispy dry. Should I have soaked them longer? Processed them longer? Because the way it ended up, the sauce was not great because you kept hitting pieces of tough, unchewable pepper skin. All suggestions appreciated. Thanks!

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  10. Hi Stephanie,

    Hmm, I'm wondering if the dried peppers you used were old, or perhaps the water wasn't hot enough. Can you tell me more, e.g., what type of pepper you used (some of the thin Asian dried peppers don't rehydrate as well)? If they were very hard and crispy-dry, then I suspect they were pretty old or super-dried on purpose for grinding/powdering rather than rehydrating.

    I usually bring water to a boil to pour over the dried chiles, rather than using hot tap water. And the peppers I rehydrate are usually the larger Mexican varieties, and they usually have some "give" to them (they aren't brittle). Two hours should be plenty of time if the water was hot enough, but it's possible that the hot tap water you used cooled off too quickly, which is a reason I like to use just-boiling water. And I process them for a good long time to make sure they're smoothly pureed.

    Dried peppers won't go bad even if they're old (at worst, the flavor just won't be as intense). It just means they'll probably be really crispy and take hotter water and longer soaking time. Super-crisp dried peppers are best for grinding to use as a powder (they'll have better flavor than any already-ground peppers from a store, just like grinding whole spices will have better flavor than buying ground spices).

    I hope this helps, and thanks for reading my blog!
    Zestfully yours,
    Gloria

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  11. Glad you found it helpful, Julia, and thanks for reading my blog!
    Zestfully yours,
    Gloria

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  12. Great post!

    Just throwing this out there, about how removing the seeds will give less heat. Common misconception that seeds hold the most heat. From wikipedia.

    Capsaicin is present in large quantities in the placental tissue (which holds the seeds), the internal membranes and, to a lesser extent, the other fleshy parts of the fruits of plants in the genus Capsicum. The seeds themselves do not produce any capsaicin, although the highest concentration of capsaicin can be found in the white pith of the inner wall, where the seeds are attached.[21]

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    1. Thanks so much, Chris - that's an excellent point, and I do remember reading that somewhere since writing this post. It can be tricky to remove the placenta in dried peppers, but a sharp knifepoint should do the trick, or you can do it after soaking the peppers.

      Thanks for reading my blog and taking the time to comment.

      Zestfully yours,
      Gloria

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  13. can you toast the dried chili's and then rehydrate them? Or can you rehydrate and then toast?

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    1. Hi Tammy, if you want to toast the chilies, I recommend doing it first and then rehydrating them. I hope this helps, and thanks for your comment! Just let me know if I can help with anything else.
      Zestfully yours,
      Gloria

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  14. VERY helpful! Thank you. Made two small jars of Chili Puree using your suggestions and they turned out fantastic.

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    1. You're most welcome, and thank YOU for reading my blog and taking the time to comment. I'm so glad that I could help. If you ever have any questions, or if I might be able to help with anything else pepper-related, recipes, etc., please don't hesitate to ask.
      Zestfully yours,
      Gloria

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  15. Recommended soak time I see is about one hour. What is the outcome for longer soak time? Mine have been soaking over night.

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  16. Thanks for your question - I've never soaked overnight, but have noticed that the longer the peppers soak, the softer & more pliable (sometimes even mushy) they become. Also, the soaking liquid will have a more pronounced peppery flavor & darker color, so keep that in mind if you use the liquid in a recipe (e.g., soups, stews, breads). Please feel free to report back on your results after you use the peppers that soaked overnight - I'm curious to hear what happened! And thanks for reading my blog and asking an interesting question.
    Zestfully yours,
    Gloria

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  17. hi, I recently brought some various dried red chillies from my local Chinese food store. however they are too hard skinned and waxy to do much with. when I soak them they remain hard and waxy, and when ground down are still gritty and unpleasant to use. I have so many as I brought them to make chilli sauce for my husband and four sons, but am at a loss at to know what to do. any suggestions please ? many thanks

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    1. Hi there - From your description, it sounds like the dried chiles you bought might be usable only to add heat to stir-fry dishes or to make chili-infused oils, and not for soaking & eating. Without knowing anything more about your chilies, that's my guess because they sound like the ones I find in Chinese restaurants in spicy dishes and *don't* eat because they're too tough & flavorless other than the extreme heat.

      If I were you, I'd save them for stir-frying: Add to the hot oil in your wok before any other ingredients and fry for a minute or two, then leave in and continue with the recipe - they'll add fiery heat & pungent peppery flavor to the stir-fry and look pretty when served but remember not to eat them. And I'd also use them to make infused spicy oils: Place as many peppers as you want in a clean lidded jar, then fill with peanut or canola oil (or other high-smoke-point oil that's good for stir-frying), close the jar tightly and let sit in a cool dark spot (e.g., your pantry) for a week or two to allow the peppers to flavor the oil. You can then use the spicy oil in any recipes you want, and the oil in the jar will get hotter over time.

      I hope this helps, and thanks for your question & for reading my blog. If you decide to use the peppers in stir-fry dishes or recipes, please let me know how they turn out.
      Zestfully yours,
      Gloria

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  18. Hi Gloria, I want to use some dried ghost peppers in my Chili and was wondering if I could just put the whole dried pepper in the chili as it simmered? I would think it would bring out the flavor of the pepper by doing this, but I'm not sure. By cutting them and chopping them up it might add more heat than I would like. Would this be an effective way to bring out some of the peppers flavor?

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    1. Hi! I think your idea of simmering the whole dried ghost pepper in the chili is an excellent way to add flavor while controlling the heat (you could even fish out the whole pepper after a period of time, if you taste the chili and deem it already hot enough). I agree with your theory that chopping the pepper might release too much heat, by exposing the pepper "ribs" where most of the capsaicin is stored, and no way to remove the pepper during cooking if you're concerned it's getting too hot. Go for it with the whole dried pepper, and please do let me know how it turns out! And maybe someday you could divide the chili into 2 pots and use a whole pepper in 1 and a chopped pepper in the other, as an experiment to compare results :-)
      Thanks for reading my blog, and I look forward to hearing how the chili turns out.
      Zestfully yours,
      Gloria

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  19. Gloria,

    Thanks so much for your quick response, I thought it was a good idea in my head, lol, and your opinion reassures me even more. The double pot test seems like a great idea, I will do that in the near future and find out if the intensity of the heat differs in both pots, and if so by how much. I will keep you updated, thanks again.

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    1. You are most welcome, always happy to help, and I eagerly await your results! Wish you could send me a bowl or two to taste-test ;-)
      Best,
      Gloria

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