So here is the thing. I have chili peppers, lots of chili peppers. Which seems incredible considering I bought 2 tiny little plants at the beginning of this summer and stuck them in a pot. And despite the weather – which was ironically a bit cold for summer – I have an abundance of chilies. I’ve only been able to use so much in our everyday cooking.
Preserving chilies is easy.
We dried some. Having my own dried chilies in the cupboard – chilies I grew – feels very self-sufficient. Dying them is simple and just requires tying them together with some scrap string and hanging them in the kitchen, preferably in a sunny window. We wrapped the string around the little green stems, securing with knots. Once dried, they will last forever. It will take a couple of weeks, but once completely dry and brittle you can take them down and store them in an open jar in the cupboard almost indefinitely. If left whole they keep their flavour and heat for a long time.
But still, dried peppers don’t have the same flavour as fresh chilies.
So when I saw this, I thought it was the best thing ever.
Fresh chilies have a brighter and more crisp flavour. Preserving them in salt like this keeps some of that freshness.
Use this as a spice. Where you would use salt, and reduce or eliminate the use of other salt in a recipe. It adds a nice bit of heat to sauces and roasted vegetables. Add it to sauteing onions and garlic and marvel at how wonderful it smells. Then marvel at how you just saved yourself a few minutes of chopping a fresh chili. The chilies almost melt into the food. If you are really heat sensitive, go easy and use sparingly, at least until you have figured out how much you can handle. There is definitely some heat in here.
Chili Pepper Salt
Ingredients:
Here’s the ratio I used:
- 1-1/2 cup coarse sea salt
- 1 cup fresh chilies (I used Thai chilies), green stems removed, left whole. you can remove the seeds if you wish, but that means handling the cut chilies and that could be just too much work not to mention hard on your hands
Directions:
Add chilies to small bowl of food processor and pulse several times until very finely minced. You don’t want a paste, so I wouldn’t use a blender for this. Add the salt. Pulse several more times so that everything is a pretty orange-pinky-red colour. Store in an airtight container. You can use this right away, but storing for a week or so will distribute the flavour of the chillies more quickly.
Thank’s for visiting. I’m Trish. I share healthy family recipes to inspire your family to eat their veggies and save room for cake!
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