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Smoking chillis

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Oaky:
A couple of years back I developed a taste for the smokiness of chipotle, but having a preference for the hotter chilli varieties I tried in vain for a while to find smoked habaneros or scotch bonnets.

Having drawn a complete blank, I decided to smoke my own.  Here's how I went about it. 

(This is actually the smoking session I did last year, with the harvest from the Caribbean Red and Orange Habanero plants pictured in the "grow your own" board thread.  I smoked a few more this year, but only a small proportion of those were home grown.)

The full set of pictures with links to slightly larger versions is here:- http://www.oakden.org/mark/misc/chillis/smoke_pics/

First, assemble the ingredients:-



These were: a bottle of wine (just about cropped out of the left of the shot), a basket of chillis (from memory I think I had about a pound of chillis in that basket)



a smoker (an old celebrations tin with a mesh shelf cut from an old disposable barbecue and a few holes punched in the lit with a nail.  I also fitted the handle from the lid of an old saucepan to the tin lid)



and some wood chips ordered over t'internet:-



First, I halved the chillis and took off the stalks (leaving the seeds and pith attached, of course)



then covered the bottom of the tin with wood chips (mostly hickory with a small admixture of mesquite).



I then spread the chillis in a single layer.  Last year I did this cut-side down as pictured, this year I tried cut-side up.  on reflection, I think cut-side down works better.



A small amount of charcoal in an old barbecue makes a good source of heat.  (I did this indoors on the gas hob one year and mrs_o was distinctly unimpressed with the smokiness of the house for a good while afterwards  :-[)



This is a good point to relax with a large glass of the aforementioned wine:-



Until the coals heat up enough:-



They weren't actually purple, that's just the way the camera's CCD interpreted it when I forced the flash to off for that shot. 

The tin goes on, propped up on a couple of old block pavoirs:-



and in about 5 to 10 minutes (time flies when you're drinking wine!) the first wisps of smoke start to appear through the nail holes in the lid



After about 20 or 30 minutes of (hot-)smoking the chillis look like this:-



after which they are transferred onto wire racks and placed into a very low oven with the door ajar to dry out (it takes a while - just keep going until they're all crispy).



The procedure is repeated until all the chillis are smoked and dried:-



It's hard to pick out from the photos but the colour is a fantastic deep ruby red and the aroma is fantastic.

Finally, an old coffee grinder is used to make a fine powder of them.  This stage is great fro clearing sinuses.



the yield as you can see was 45g.  That lasted over a year though - a little of this stuff goes a very long way.  It's lovely on scrambled eggs, in soups, in pasta etc.

I add it usually as a condiment, just sprinkling a tiny bit from the end of a teaspoon into whatever I'm eating.

Rhys W:
 :thumbsup:  :thumbsup:  :thumbsup:  :thumbsup:

bobb:
Awesomeness!

Never mind scrambled eggs - I bet that would be great sprinkled on a pickled egg  :P

Valiant:
Nice :)

AwfulQuiet:
Wow, great job.. Looks excellent!

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