[TZ-OH6]

Here is something you can do with your unripe end of season hot peppers, hot ornamental peppers, and slightly moldy/buggy hot peppers. It helps to have a dehydrator but you could use the oven on low for drying and reducing the liquid.

Pepper/Capcaisin Extract:

--3-5 cups of dried flakes/crushed peppers (about a gallon ziplock full of dried whole/half habanero sized peppers before crushing). The blender-food processor works good for crushing the peppers. You could do this with or without the booze (dry or wet)
--75 ml bottle of cheapest vodka or white rum (80 proof). Add more water if needed.

Soak peppers in booze over night, drain, and press out liquid in a wire sieve.

Strain liquid through clean cloth (coffee filters get clogged by the fine sediment).

Place liquid in a shallow dish (glass brownie pan etc) and reduce in dehydrator or oven. It only took a half a day on the jerky setting of my dehydrator to reduce the liquid by more than half. (I also re dehydrated the pepper flakes since they still retained alot of heat)

I ended up with about a half of a cup of extract from a bottle of white rum.


So why make this stuff? ...It is a nice addition to certain beverages. I dip a teaspoon in the jar of extract to coat it an then stir it into the liquid. My favorites so far...


--Hot chocolate. Some chocolates have a bit of a bite anyway and this enhances that.

--Cheap jug Sangria. I never would have though that it would turn out this good. Iced sangria with a kick.

--Bourbon.

and of course you could add it to your to high-end vodka without having to pay for a whole bottle of Absolut Peppar

Possibly ice cream? Dipping the spoon in the extract rather than putting the extract on the ice cream might be best.

Dipped toothpicks (fire sticks) for you hot heads (not for me).

?Dipped cinnamon sticks for holiday gifts to other chiliheads?

If you like Red Hot candies you can kick them up a notch or three.



You could also use it in sprays to keep deer away from your vegetables, but soaking the pepper flakes in cheaper rubbing alcohol (not edible) and not reducing it would be easier and cheaper.


The hard core amature/Pro-Am hotsauce makers use ultra hot varieties(Bhut Jolokias, Trinidad scorpions etc) and Everclear grain alcohol or 151 rum to get dangerously hot extract (dangerously hot and dangerous to make). What I'm suggesting here is an easy, inexpensive way to get a useful culinary product out of peppers that are not good for much else.