Nutrition
| Per 100 g | Per 1 oz (28 g) | |
|---|---|---|
| Energy | 300 kcal | 85 kcal |
| Protein | 14.3 g | 4 g |
| Fat | 3 g | 0.9 g |
| saturated | 0.3 g | 0.1 g |
| Carbohydrate | 54.8 g | 15.5 g |
| sugars | 39.8 g | 11.3 g |
| Fibre | 11.3 g | 3.2 g |
| Sodium | 68 mg | 19 mg |
Estimated from the ingredients, for the finished dried product. Actual values vary with the produce you use and how far you dry it.
Ingredients
- 1.6 kg jalapeños
Instructions
- Put gloves on before you pick up a knife. Jalapeno oil stays on skin for hours and transfers to everything you touch afterwards, and a whole batch is enough capsaicin to make that memorable.
- Rinse the peppers in cool water and dry them on a towel. Cut a wet pepper and the juice thins out and runs, which spreads the heat over everything on the board.
- Cut the stems off and slice each pepper lengthways, then scrape the seeds and the pale ribs away. That is where the heat concentrates, so leaving them in makes a far hotter result than most people expect from a jalapeno.
- Chop the halves to whatever size you cook with — a rough dice suits chilli and soups, finer suits cornbread. Keep one size to a tray, because a small piece finishes hours ahead of a large one.
- Spread the pieces in a single layer with a solid tray underneath. Chopped pepper shrinks a long way and will drop through mesh once it does.
- Dry at 52 °C for 15 hours somewhere with the door open or a window nearby. Chillies give off a fume as they dry that will clear a kitchen.
- They are done when a cooled piece snaps rather than folding and there is no soft, flexible flesh at the thick end. Anything that bends goes back on, since one damp piece will let mould into the jar.
- Store them in a sealed mason jar or a freezer bag in a dark cupboard for a year. They will rehydrate straight into a pot of chilli, and they lose heat very slowly compared with how quickly they lose their green colour.
