Ever since last time we made pepper powder, which was also the first time we made a pepper powder, I’ve been making all sorts of plans in my mind for the next homemade spices. Jalapeño powder was in the plan this time around. Over the weekend we went to Pete’s Fresh Market (one of my favorite grocery stores in Chicago) and stocked up on just about everything, including 3 pounds of jalapeños which cost just under $3.00! And after splurging for these little spicy peppers it only took an entire morning, afternoon, and evening to oven dry them out. Totally worth it!

Ingredients used : Jalapeño peppers (3 pounds).

I’m not gonna lie, slowly dry roasting peppers until they are totally dried out takes a bit of time. You’ll need be ready to set your oven to the lowest setting all day. Mine goes just under 200° – at such a low temperature the peppers are warm enough to dry out without burning. Even though this process takes all day it doesn’t require much of your attention. Nothing is happening fast which means you can attend to the peppers pretty much anytime you feel like it. Towards the end it will require more frequent check ups.

Before starting you may consider getting your hands on some rubber gloves. You will be handling the peppers a lot. Especially while cutting the fresh peppers, you’ll wish it wasn’t your bare hands doing the work.  Of course I did NOT wear gloves throughout the process and my hands were very spice-tainted for a couple of days – it wasn’t too bad, I just had to be careful about touching my eyes and petting the cats etc. Spicy pepper oil doesn’t exactly wash off right away and it can be uncomfortable to deal with. Don’t be surprised if you don’t take extra precautions.

Jalapeño powder can be made with any amount of jalapeños. I used 3 pounds which was about 35 decent sized peppers. Because there were so many it required 2 baking sheets at the beginning (until they shriveled up and could fit on one tray towards the middle of the roast). We happen to have 2 ovens, but you could also use different racks within the same oven if you want to roast a lot at once. 3 pounds ground up to be a little over a cup of jalapeño powder.

The last time I made a pepper powder I roasted all of the peppers whole, jalapeños included. We used a variety of peppers in that batch from an overstock of our garden. The jalapeños were the thickest and therefore took the longest time to dry out. This time, since I was doing all jalapeños, I decided to cut them into smaller pieces in order to help them dry out faster. I quartered half of them on one baking sheet and cut the rest into halves on the other sheet – I did this partially because by the time I got half way through cutting the 35 peppers in quarters I wanted to handle them less and also I was curious how big of a difference it would make in the drying process. Obviously the quarters dried out quicker. Half way through the roast I ended up cutting the halves in half again. The smaller the pieces the quicker they will roast.  Next time I might try slicing them in rings – I didn’t do that this time because I had so many to roast and not enough room in the oven.

Cut all of the peppers and place them open face up on the baking sheet. Do not use any oil, this is a dry roast. I used parchment paper underneath but you can place them directly on the sheet as well. If you are not wearing gloves be aware of what your hands are touching for the rest of the day. If you touch your face or eyes you will have a stinging reminder that will linger for some time and you will be be more aware going forward. However, if you have affectionate pets or kitties like I do, be sure to avoid petting them too much – they will probably not be able to communicate to you that their face feels like it’s on fire! No good.

Place the sheets in the oven and periodically check on them and flip. Since the oven was at such a low temperature I just used my hands to rotate the peppers. It was easiest for me, but you can also use small tongs or a utensil to help. The drying process will start off slow and speed up as time goes by. It’s important to flip them so all sides of the pepper have a chance to dry out.

About half way through the roast, the peppers lost enough moisture to shrink down and be able to fit on one pan.  The baking sheet with the peppers only cut in half were not as dried out as the sheet with the quartered pieces (big surprise). Eventually I just cut them in quarter size as well to help speed up the process. As they were drying I noticed in some of the peppers at the points where seeds were attached to the meat there was more moisture than other parts, so I loosened or detached the seeds in order to allow the subtle heat to reach those areas.

Toward the end of the slow roast pick out the fully dried peppers to avoid burning. They will dry at different rates although the seeds seemed to dry out before anything else. It’s apparent they are finished when the pepper skin has shriveled up and darkened in color.  It should not be able to bend without cracking. As I picked out the dry ones out I placed them in a holding bowl before grinding them all at once.

Once all of the peppers are removed from the oven it’s time to grind them up and make them into a fresh jalapeño spice. We used our Magic Bullet for grinding. You can use a spice grinder of course or a coffee grinder that is thoroughly cleaned out before and after grinding. But perhaps jalapeño accented coffee would be delicious. Grinding instructions are simple, place them in and grind them up until desired texture. We like a coarse pepper powder because it’s perfect to sprinkle on any dish. So far we have spiced up soup, popcorn, chickpeas, and bread.

Throughout spring and summer we prepared fresh salsa about once a week- sometimes even more.  As fall set in I noticed that we had not been making fresh salsa nearly as much, although we have been making many meals that are naturally complimented by salsa.  We started to miss it. With busy lives and produce seasons changing the desire and convenience of making fresh salsa has slowed down.

We never buy store bought salsa for a few reasons, the first being the fact that I don’t tolerate onions and I have never seen a store bought jar of salsa excluding them (let me know if you know of one!) We consciously try to avoid purchasing pre-packaged food that contain unnecessary ingredients and preservatives, and also because it can get kind of pricey — once you figure out how inexpensive and delicious it is to make your own fresh salsa it just doesn’t seem worth it to buy mass produced versions anymore. Of course there are decent market fresh salsas — but all of which will contain onions, suitable for the majority. A jarred salsa is so convenient and a perfect snack, and since we don’t purchase it from the store and haven’t been making it fresh, we have been deprived. This is why we decided to can our own. We have thought about doing this for a while and now we’re living the dream! We have a full stock of custom salsa in the cabinet! Like fresh salsa there are many “right” ways to do this.  Here is how our first attempt went.

Ingredients : plum tomatoes, bell peppers (green, red, orange, yellow), jalapeños, habeñeros, lime, salt, cilantro.

Supplies needed : canning tools, 5-6 pint jars, large pot for boiling.

Recipe:
8 cups plum tomatoes seeded and diced
2 green peppers
2 yellow peppers
1 red pepper
1 orange pepper
4 fat mild jalapeños
2 habeñeros
5 pieces of garlic
7 table spoons lime
4 teaspoons kosher salt
2 bundles cilantro- 1 heaping cup chopped

Before you start this process make sure you have all of your canning equipment ready (jars with fresh lids, a pot large enough to boil the jars with 2 inches of water over top, and canning tools for lifting the hot jars/lids from the water). Wash your jars with hot water and soap, set aside while you prepare your ingredients. If you have an extremely large pot to boil your jars it may take quite a while to heat up the water — you can set it to warm up at anytime so you’re not in a situation where you are waiting for long.  Fill the pot with enough water to cover the tops of the jars with 2 inches of water.

Prepare all of the ingredients before cooking.  Seed and dice the tomatoes and peppers, pluck the cilantro leaves from the stem and chop finely, crush and mince the garlic.  Once you have chopped everything it is time to cook!

We used a 4 quart pot which would hold up to 8 pints worth of salsa — this batch made 5 1/2 pints for us. Heat up the pot with a splash of olive oil and add your garlic, jalapeños, & habeñeros. Saute for a moment and include the rest of your peppers.

Add tomatoes and simmer for a couple of minutes, it will become more soupy.

Throw in cilantro, lime, & salt to taste. Bring salsa to a full boil for at least 5 minutes.

Remove from heat and cover while you sterilize your jars before canning. Place washed jars in the pot of water to simmer for 5 minutes, do not boil.  Place lids (not the rings) in a separate pot of water to simmer, do not boil. Remove the jars from the water bath with the jar lifters and place on a heat safe surface, we use a wooden cutting board.

Fill your jars with the salsa leaving about a ½ inch of space from the top. Use a funnel to avoid spilling on the jar.  Poke the mixture with a clean utensil to push out any extra air bubbles — we use a chop stick. Wipe around the rim of the jar with a clean towel before closing.

With the magnetic lid lifter place your jar lid and screw the band on with enough force but not too tight. Use the jar lifters to place jars back into the water bath and bring to a rolling boil for at least 5 minutes. Remove jars right side up and place back on to the heat safe surface, allow to rest undisturbed for 24 hours.  Over the next hour you will hear pops from the lids which indicates a successful canning. The following day your jars should be complete. Test that they were canned successfully by lifting the jar by just the sealed lid (remove the screw top), it should be securely attached.

For more instructions and information on canning please refer to Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving or other sources with more experience; we are amateurs.

The salsa turned out to be delicious, though fresh is still better, but now we have enough salsa to last us several weeks, maybe even months! It took a little time to do, but if you’re like me it was a fun activity and we saved a lot of money by doing it. We listed out the cost of this particular salsa below, to make 5+ pints of salsa it cost us just under $9.00! I’d say that’s pretty good, an average pint of salsa at the grocery store would cost around $5.00 which means we saved over $15.00 and we are glad to know exactly how it was made and processed.

Cost :
tomatoes- $3.30
bell peppers- $2.94
cilantro- $1.10
jalapeño- $0.38
lime- $0.25
habeñero- $0.18
garlic- $0.07
salt- $0.01

total cost $8.95 for 5 pints of fresh custom salsa.

This year our porch garden had 5 pots of various peppers: jalapeño, red chili, habeñero, serrano, & ancho. We used about 40 of our red chilies to make chili garlic sauce and had well over 60 more peppers to use! Many peppers were used fresh throughout the summer but whatever was left at the end of the season we used to make a chili powder. Ingredients : about 50 peppers- we used jalapeños, red chilies, habeñeros, and serranos. We slow roasted the peppers until they were dry enough to grind into a powder. To do this, set your oven to the lowest temperature; our oven went down to about 200°F and seemed to work well. I was prepared for this dry roast to take a long time, possibly even overnight, so I started in the morning and planned to be home all day. Place all of the whole peppers onto a non-oiled sheet pan. Pop it in the oven and periodically flip & turn the peppers so all sides dry evenly. The peppers will shrivel up and become a little darker in color.  The habeñeros seemed to dry the fastest because their skin is so thin, next up were the chilies, then the serranos, and coming in last were the jalapeños. Because they were all different sizes and dried at different rates, I removed each pepper from the oven as it was ready to avoid any sort of burning. This took about 10 hours in the oven before they were all dry enough to grind; it could take longer though depending on the size of you peppers and your oven. We ground all of the peppers together with our magic bullet, but any spice grinder or clean coffee grinder should do the trick as well — if you use your coffee grinder I wouldn’t be surprised if you have a few spicy mornings to follow. This stuff is really powerful! Prep your dried peppers by getting rid of the stems; I found scissors to work the best. Chop the rest of the pepper into smaller pieces to maximize space in the grinder. It might not be a bad idea to wear gloves during this step, my hands felt the heat the following day. Grind until desired consistency. Half way to powder form you get a really nice crushed pepper flake.  We wanted ours to be a coarse powder, as we often use cayenne powder in our kitchen, but sometimes I think it’s ground up a too finely for what we need and it’s hard to sprinkle evenly as a topper. Leaving it as a more coarse texture will make it easier to spread evenly for a little extra spice and it won’t clump together as much as a finer powder would. Throughout this entire process your house will smell strongly of peppers, but once you open the grinder of the fresh pepper powder you’ll really understand how intense it is! Anyone in the house will be able to detect it. This fresh spice is very different from the rest of the powders in your cabinet. We have already used our new spice a few times to make lotus chips, curry, and chick pea snacks!

Chicago’s fall came quick and is already on its way out.  Naturally with cold weather moving in our garden has been fading away.  A couple of weeks ago, Joe & I harvested all of our red chilies to make a garlic chili paste. This would be our first time making a chili paste and our first canning experience! Definitely not the last either! Although we only made a small batch to start, it was enough to get us excited for more canning. We used 37 red chilies to make 3 (4oz) jars of chili garlic paste.

ingredients : 37 red chilies, 4 cloves garlic, 2 tablespoons distilled white vinegar, 1/2 teaspoon salt, & 2 tablespoons sugar,

equipment used : 3 (4oz) jars, canning tools, a large pot, magic bullet, other ordinary pots.

Making the actual sauce was easy.  We chopped off all of the stems from the chilies and sliced them a couple of times to no particular size. We peeled the garlic and measured out the other ingredients. Then combined everything in the magic bullet and pureed. We added about half of our chili pieces to start and then more as there was room in the bullet vessel, a blender would also work. Once all of the ingredients were combined, we poured them into a sauce pot and boiled for about 5 minutes. We reduced the boil to a simmer until the paste was fully cooked, about 15 additional minutes.

Meanwhile, prepare your jars and lids for canning. We used Ball Complete Book of Home Canning to guide us through the process. Start off by thoroughly cleaning your jars and lids with warm water and soap. In a pot large enough to submerge your jars with at least 1 inch of water over the jars, bring the jars to a simmer; do not boil. Prepare your lids by simmering in a smaller sauce pan until you are ready to use them. Once the sauce is done cooking, fill the jars one at a time. Use your canning tools to help carefully lift the jars from the pot to a work surface that can handle the heat. Ladle the sauce into the jars leaving about 1/4 inch from the top.  Use a clean cloth to wipe around the jar rim. Remove your jar lid from the simmering sauce pan with your magnet wand and place onto the jar; tighten the screw band just enough, but avoid over tightening to achieve a proper seal. Place sealed jars back into the pot with a water level that is at least an inch over your jars, cover and bring to a rolling boil for at least 5 minutes. Turn the heat off, remove lid and let stand for another 5 minutes.  Remove jars and leave them alone for about 24 hours, listen for the “pop” sound- this will indicate that your jars are properly sealed. To be sure they are sealed properly check after the 24 hours that the lids do not move when you press them, remove the screw band and lift the jar by the sealed lid. It should be firmly attached.

This was a pretty simple process  and a great way for us to use so many chilies at once.  We would have never been able to eat the 37 chilies before they went bad and now we can enjoy them all winter long.

–use our experience as a loose guide to the process. We’re just getting started and there is so much more to learn! Safety precautions must be taken when canning and preserving food (especially if you plan to share). Research further!