Everything You Wanted To Know About Air Drying Your Chillies

OK, so you've decided to go the traditional route and air dry your chillies. Great.

The string of chillies known as a ristra (shown below) is the most traditional and best known method for air drying chillies.
Fortunately they are a great way of both drying and storing your chillies.

Before you start, make sure you are not trying to dry any of the thicker fleshed varieties such as Jalapenos , Roccotos, or some of the New Mexico varieties.

If you do want to dry these varieties, you need to use the dehydrator technique. Also, you need to make sure you are living in an arid environment.

Proper drying will simply not occur in the tropics.

Step 1 - Sort through your chillies and remove any that fruit that have black spots as these will usually rot and/or go mouldy.

Step 2 - The more traditional, Mexican method is done as follows. Start by wrapping some string around three individual chilli stems twice, then bring the string up between two of the chillies and finish off with a half-hitch (or granny knot) over the stems. Using the same piece of string, continue tying up groups of three chillies until it gets too awkward to handle.

At that point you can simply start again. To make a half metre ristra will require around 4 kilograms of fresh chillies.

or

You can use the far less traditional, but faster and easier technique.

Using a large needle threaded with string or 50lb fishing line, push the needle through the base or widest part of the stem, pushing the chillies up tightly against each other.

Ristras made by this technique tend to look thinner than the traditional method. Tying two or three of these ristras together will get around this.

This is also the easiest way to handle smaller chiles such as cayennes or piquins, which require a lot of time and effort to hang in the traditional way.

Step 3 - Hang your chilli ristra outside somewhere where it will get some airflow. Check it every now and again and remove any chillies that look like they are beginning to rot. There is always some.

Hanging it outside is the best option for a number of reasons;

• they will dry faster and better
• if any of the chillies do begin to rot they frequently drip a sticky substance that can stain pretty much anything
• one rotting chilli will draw those sticky little fruit flies (sometimes called vinegar flies) by the millions

Step 4 - when you need a chilli, simply snap it off at the stem and use your dried chillies.

You have two main options here.

First, you can grind the chillies to flakes or powder when required. Use a coffee grinder, food processor, or mortar and pestle to grind them down to the size that you're after. CAUTION - take care not to get chilli powder in your eyes or lungs !

Secondly, they can he rehydrated by simply soaking it hot water for 10 minutes. They are then ready for use.

At this point you are ready to start trying out some chilli recipes or barbecueing.