Harvested one of my Carolina reaper plants. About 50 or so peppers. I’m not sure what to do with them, I’m a little scared of them. Last year I had a gigantic ghost pepper harvest and they were so hot! These are supposed to be hotter!!
Aside from dehydrating them and making powder, is there anything I can realistically do with them other than give them away?
About triple this amount still in the garden!
Thanks!!
by Party-Artichoke3
20 Comments
Wow that’s some crazy variation!
I’m about to dehydrate my peppers and grind them into flakes and powder, thats a good idea for a large batch of peppers like that. You can also make hot sauce and/or spicy salsa with those! Any extras you can toss in the freezer and they’ll keep over winter until you use them all up!
Start boofing.
Hot sauce!! Ideally, you have some other varieties to keep it from being too hot, but I made at least one batch with all reapers last year and was able to use it all.
You can add fruit and other ingredients to cool it down too, but my favorite recipe is just peppers, garlic and vinegar (plus some salt, dried oregano, etc).
Freeze them until you have a need. They’ll cook, dry, and ferment just as well.
edit: I should learn to read the full post
Throw them in some brine to ferment to delay figuring out what to do with them for a few weeks! That’s what I do, at least.
I give my habaneros to a Guyanese lady at work who has a higher spice tolerance than me. She’ll take them off your hands.
Search up donne denanche. My local type of sauce. Addicting and better than other hot sauces for sure.
Eat them raw one at a time in your front yard with no shirt on and wearing a rally visor I guess
Make a fermented pepper mash with salt and time, then add in small amounts to food or make a homemade hot sauce
Try pickelling them
Smoke em if you got em.
It’s wild to me how many “what should I do with these” posts there are around here. I can’t imagine putting all the time and effort in over an entire season to grow Chiles and not have a plan haha.
Hot sauce. Freeze for future use. Sell. Pickle. Ferment. Dry for powder. Chili oil. Ramen, stir fry, burritos. Put them in a peanut butter sandwhich or literally any other food.
Aside, there is some crazy variation in pod shape from this plant. Wild. Some of those are massive!
I got some smoker tubes off of Amazon and pecan chips and it has changed the game. I have my 4th batch on the grill right now. It adds so much flavor then they’re smoked and dried it’s amazing how good it is and they’ll store in your cupboard for years however they will slowly lose flavor/potency.
I have an extra coffee grinder for hot peppers and when I need some I grind a few up and use the powder. Pro tip is to put a piece of foil tightly over the cover grinder bowl before putting the lid on. Then let it sit for a minute after grinding and all the dust will settle in the cup and have been trapped by the foil.
You got all that off one plant?!! I have 3 Carolina reaper plants and I don’t get that much.. Nice work!!
Things I make with mine: BBQ hot sauce, pickled chilli’s & chilli chutney, it’s also goes well when you are making a vindaloo or any Indian dish you want to spice up.
I’ve also made a pepper spray with them.. now that they are great for!!
You are right they are fucking hot! So take it easy on how many you put in!
When I have too many, I freeze them till I’m ready to use them, they tend to lose a little bit of the heat after freezing, but still have the great taste.
Hope this helps!
Make hot sauce or salsa
I’m in a similar situation – my reaper plants have produced over a kg of reapers so far, likely going to double by end of season.
I’m bulk fermenting all of them, and will be making hot sauce from the ferment in a couple weeks’ time – the plan is to make a bunch of small batches to experiment with recipes.
Others have pointed out that heating something with this much capsaicin is a great way to teargas yourself – luckily fermented sauce requires no cooking, but be careful nonetheless.
Friendly reminder to wash your hands before touching sensitive areas.
Dehydrate, then roast in a cast iron skillet, the make salsa macha! I did that with about four lbs of ghost chilis and I cannot get enough
