What to do with Chillis?

[Palmela]

I've just harvested an end of season bumper crop of chillis from the garden. I'd planned to de-seed and fry with onions to have a big batch of sauce for cooking, but is there anything 'better' I can do with them?

[Mobile Chicane]

Pickle them! An easy pickling recipe to follow is the 3-2-1 method; three parts water, two parts vinegar, and one part sugar.

[Nothingtoseehere]

Ferment them - make a fermented hot sauce.

Dry them and make your own chilli powder. Sounds quite boring, and I only did it as I had some left over from my sauce batches, but it was really good chilli powder - had flavour and heat. Dry them in the oven then blitz them in a mini blender.

[loskie]

I dried some and they lasted for ages and still did well.

Make some Chilli Jam?

[Palmela]

I have never fermented or pickled them, but did make some very good chilli jam last year.

[Deep Thought]

Chilli Jam!

https://www.nigella.com/recipes/chilli-jam

[MattsCar]

Deep Thought said:

Chilli Jam!

https://www.nigella.com/recipes/chilli-jam

With Christmas coming up, a cranberry and chilli jam would be nice to add a bit of kick to the dinner.

[nikaiyo2]

I strung loads onto a bit of string, hung them over the back of the hot water cylinder in the airing cupboard, and dropped them, so now they are behind the hot water cylinder for ever.

[JPC63]

I bought a load last week, but they were a bit hotter than I thought, so stuck the rest in the freezer.

[The Gauge]

I made candid chillies (or Cowboy chillies) when I had a bumper crop, it an amazing sweet chilli dressing for adding to burgers or pizzas etc, you get the heat but its is also lovely and sweet, the liquid tasing amazing drizzled onto pizza or on steak on the bbq etc..

Basically involves simmering the chopped up chillies in a pan with a water & sugar solution, then decanting into Kilner jars with screw top lids which had to go through the canning process to seal the lids (submerging the jars into a big pan of boiling water, then cooling down).

For the rest of the chillies I bought a vacuum sealing machine from Amazon and bagged them all up, vacuum sealed the bags and then put in the freezer.

https://www.food.com/recipe/candied-jalapeno-or-co...

[ambuletz]

Chili sauce, chili paste. Pickle. Or just freeze them. In it's frozen state you can then grate onto food

[Ed Boon II]

Add to pickled onions, amazing combo.

[CaptainScarlet1967]

Slice up and lightly fry / sautée with(out) onions and coriander before mixing in eggs for a South Asian inspired omelette.

Chilli bhajis/pakoras are worth a try making if they're large enough.

De-seeded and finely sliced - goes great with cheese and (flat)bread as part of a sandwich/mezze with a bit of crunch or heat.

I have inadvertently dehydrated chillis in the fridge by forgetting they were there. They keep well and break/flake up quite easily for addition into other dishes as and when.

[Rich1973]

They freeze well. Bag them up and chuck them in the freezer.

[Palmela]

Thanks for the suggestions. In the end I froze the small hot ones but used the rest to make a basic curry gravy for future curries.

Chilli, onion, garlic and spices. Cooked almost to caramelisation and then whizzed. It's quite cheeky!

[Philplop]

nikaiyo2 said:

I strung loads onto a bit of string, hung them over the back of the hot water cylinder in the airing cupboard, and dropped them, so now they are behind the hot water cylinder for ever.

This had me in tears.

[soad]

Rich1973 said:

They freeze well. Bag them up and chuck them in the freezer.

The easiest option. Tend to do it ourselves.

[Heathwood]

As an easy addition to future cooking, I tend to chop them all up, spoon the bits into ice cube trays adding water over the top. Then once frozen, extract and chuck them in a couple of freezer bags and add them, like a spicy ice cube, to put a bit of fire into any future cooking.

[hidetheelephants]

nikaiyo2 said:

I strung loads onto a bit of string, hung them over the back of the hot water cylinder in the airing cupboard, and dropped them, so now they are behind the hot water cylinder for ever.

Fishing hooks and some line will have them put.

[craigjm]

nikaiyo2 said:

I strung loads onto a bit of string, hung them over the back of the hot water cylinder in the airing cupboard, and dropped them, so now they are behind the hot water cylinder for ever.