October Purchase - Chilli Plants
We decided to purchase end of season chilli plants. We knew they probably wouldn’t last long unless we brought them indoors for the winter (and turned up the heat!). Instead we wanted the fruits to experiment making chilli sauces as well as some dehydrated ground chillis. The chilli types were diverse including Carolina Reapers, Lemon Drop, Trinidad Cherry, Fatalli, Cayenne Pepper, Scotch Bonnet, Royal Black and Bhut Crop.
The focus was on the following:
Seed collection for our own use
Dehydrated ground chillis
Chilli sauces
We quickly realised that some of these chillis are so hot that its hard to stay in the room whilst you’re processing them and whether you wear gloves or not, somehow the chilli gets onto your hands and then your face.
We made chilli sauces using the Caroline Reaper, which until last summer 2023, was the hottest chilli in the world. To make the sauce we realised that it’s pretty much only possible to get close to 60% chilli in the sauce otherwise there is no liquidity to the sauce. In fact we were at approximately 57% Caroline Reaper, 38% Malt Vinegar (although we could have used cider vinegar) and 5% salt. That sauce is packed away and we are apprehensive about using it. The reason being that we made an 8% Caroline Reaper version which works perfectly with just one level teaspoon in a chilli con carne or curry, any more and it blows your socks off! In fact, the 8% level teaspoon gives you the spice and chilli flavour and doesn’t have the long heat afterwards, so it works well for us. Of course there are tough people out there who would have their food much hotter. The 8% version consisted of 8% Caroline Reaper, 46% sweet bell pepper, 26% vinegar, 16% garlic and 4% salt.
We dehydrated the seeds and hoped that the dehydration heat of 35 degrees celsius would not harm them. Our theory was that chillis are grown in hot climates naturally and so should be used to temperatures of 35C. We will have to wait until the Spring 2024 to see if they are ok.
The ground chillis were very tough to process and the chilli dust gets in the air making the process intensely uncomfortable. We ground the fruits and then dehydrated. As these are 100% chilli and one being Caroline Reaper we are very wary as to how much we use them on food as it is very easy to go over the top on heat!
In all it felt like a great learning curve and lots of fun and we have chilli sauce and ground chillis to last us a while. We also have chilli seeds to experiment with propagation in the Spring 2024.
