Learning how to dry chilli peppers is a very useful skill to have if you have taken the trouble to grown your own chilli peppers and have ended up with a surplus harvest. Chilli peppers can be frozen or canned, but drying them is much simpler and you can then use them at your leisure in cooking. However, you must take great care when handling chilli peppers of any variety as they contain oils that can causing painful burning in your eyes, nose, and mouth, so always wear gloves with touching a raw chilli pepper.
Chilli peppers can be dried using a variety of methods and learning how to dry chilli peppers at home is very quick and simple. Using the sun to dry chilli peppers is a very traditional method and one that has been used for centuries in hot countries. Chilli peppers need to be sliced open down the middle and the seeds removed before being placed on a sheet and left in the sun. The drying process can be expedited up by placing the chillies on a metal surface so that they are heated from below. Once the chillies have been out for around eight hours, turn them over to dry from the other side. It may take a few days for the chilli peppers to dry our sufficiently, but once they feel brittle to the touch, they are ready.
If you live in a climate where the sun is an infrequent visitor, you can always learn how to dry chilli peppers in the oven. Any type of oven will do the job as long as you set it to a low temperature. If you have a gas oven, simply leaving the pilot light on will often give off enough heat to effectively dry your chilli peppers overnight. An electric oven should be turned on to the lowest setting. Chilli peppers can be sliced in half or cut into rings before being placed on baking sheets. The chillies will dry out if left in the oven overnight, or alternatively all day. Unlike the sun drying process, the chilli peppers will not require turning over.
Another old-fashioned technique for drying chilli peppers is to hang them up to dry in the air. This method is ideal if you have a room with a good flow of air such as a screened patio or porch, although it is not as quick as other methods. Using a long piece of thread with a cork or wooden dowel on the bottom, pass a needle through each chilli pepper and stack them up on the thread until you have a long line of chillies you can hang up vertically. Not only will they dry out, they will also look very pretty. The drying process can take between three weeks to a month to complete.
Learning how to dry chilli peppers in a dehydrator is useful if you have more money to spend. Dehydrators are obviously more expensive than any other method, but if your have a regular supply of chilli peppers to dry, then a dehydrator will do the job swiftly and efficiently. Dehydrators are designed with or without a fan. A dehydrator with a fan will work much faster, but it will cost more. Chilli peppers need to be placed on a tray and can be prepared in the same way as you would for oven drying. In a dehydrator with a fan the process will take between eight and ten hours; without a fan the drying process will take between ten and twelve hours.