Today in Kitchen Value Recovery
Jul. 16th, 2022 12:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
walkitoutSome years before the birth of my first child, I bought a bunch of whole dried chili peppers. At least one of the smaller packets had a best by date that involved the year 2005. You know, and it is not like whole dried chili peppers go bad quickly.
Because the packages had disintegrated somewhat, I had repackaged three of the peppers into a quart sized ziplock bag, before I had learned that you really should not put dried food into closed ziplock bags. Two had mold internally (long, long since dried out mold, but nevertheless) and I tossed those. The other was fine. All the rest of the many, many, many chili peppers were fine, despite _all_ of them being enclosed in a sealed rubbermaid-type canister.
There were a _lot_ of dried arbol chilis. Everything else there was a little of. I read recipes. I pulled out a couple cookbooks. I wasn’t super impressed with anything I was reading. I had zero intension of rehydrating anything, much less fermenting it. I didn’t feel like roasting or toasting or whatevering anything. All of that just releases a bunch of volatiles that honestly I would rather stayed _in_ the peppers until they were used (if ever). And given the volume involved, potentially makes my entire house un-air-conditioned for the day.
BEFORE I STARTED ANYTHING: I drank my tea. I made sure everyone had had breakfast / coffee, so they wouldn’t _need_ the kitchen for the next hour. I went to the bathroom. I put on a disposable mask. I put on nitrile exam gloves. I got all the equipment I was going to use out (except for the coffee grinder — that I found later, but I washed my gloved hands before opening any cabinets). And I opened the kitchen window and the slider. Because I am not an idiot. I _used_ to be an idiot. But aversive training with capsaicin is surprisingly persistent across decadal intervals.
I got out a food processor, and tried that, with the expected results: really hard to get a fine grind on dried anything in a food processor. So. Next up: track down one of the coffee / spice grinders that we only use for spices. Normally, this starts a massive process of, oh, I didn’t clean this adequately and I don’t want previous spice flavors cluttering up this round. But it was mostly clean, so I ran a dry white cloth around it. Seems like I probably ran cumin and/or cinnamon through it most recently and there were no off flavors. Off to the races!
I removed stems and seeds from all the non-arbols (I recognized some New Mexicos in there, and I _think_ that there was some scotch bonnet. There were also several round peppers that did not seem super hot, so that’s something anyway). I ran them through the spice grinder in stages. I put the resulting powder into a jar. (I did get a funnel out. I wonder if I washed my hands before opening that drawer? Hmmm.) I did the same for the arbols. (I got a second, separate jar out for those. I wonder if I washed my hands before opening that drawer? Maybe I should go clean knobs.)
A. came downstairs in the middle of this and remarkably did _not_ start coughing, altho _even with the hood fan on, the window open and the slider open, she could definitely smell the pepper. She wanted to know when the dress we ordered her on Amazon would arrive. I said, I can’t look that up right now, but I’ll do that in about an hour. Then I asked her to leave so I could go back to running the grinder.
I had initially thought about making some kind of hot sauce, but I ultimately settled on just having powdered dried pepper. Hopefully, this will be used much more consistently than when it was whole dried peppers hidden in a canister behind R.’s random stuff.
Honestly, I’m a little terrified at how powerful this stuff is. You would think that after a couple decades, even arbols would be milder, but I’m thinking maybe not.
Because the packages had disintegrated somewhat, I had repackaged three of the peppers into a quart sized ziplock bag, before I had learned that you really should not put dried food into closed ziplock bags. Two had mold internally (long, long since dried out mold, but nevertheless) and I tossed those. The other was fine. All the rest of the many, many, many chili peppers were fine, despite _all_ of them being enclosed in a sealed rubbermaid-type canister.
There were a _lot_ of dried arbol chilis. Everything else there was a little of. I read recipes. I pulled out a couple cookbooks. I wasn’t super impressed with anything I was reading. I had zero intension of rehydrating anything, much less fermenting it. I didn’t feel like roasting or toasting or whatevering anything. All of that just releases a bunch of volatiles that honestly I would rather stayed _in_ the peppers until they were used (if ever). And given the volume involved, potentially makes my entire house un-air-conditioned for the day.
BEFORE I STARTED ANYTHING: I drank my tea. I made sure everyone had had breakfast / coffee, so they wouldn’t _need_ the kitchen for the next hour. I went to the bathroom. I put on a disposable mask. I put on nitrile exam gloves. I got all the equipment I was going to use out (except for the coffee grinder — that I found later, but I washed my gloved hands before opening any cabinets). And I opened the kitchen window and the slider. Because I am not an idiot. I _used_ to be an idiot. But aversive training with capsaicin is surprisingly persistent across decadal intervals.
I got out a food processor, and tried that, with the expected results: really hard to get a fine grind on dried anything in a food processor. So. Next up: track down one of the coffee / spice grinders that we only use for spices. Normally, this starts a massive process of, oh, I didn’t clean this adequately and I don’t want previous spice flavors cluttering up this round. But it was mostly clean, so I ran a dry white cloth around it. Seems like I probably ran cumin and/or cinnamon through it most recently and there were no off flavors. Off to the races!
I removed stems and seeds from all the non-arbols (I recognized some New Mexicos in there, and I _think_ that there was some scotch bonnet. There were also several round peppers that did not seem super hot, so that’s something anyway). I ran them through the spice grinder in stages. I put the resulting powder into a jar. (I did get a funnel out. I wonder if I washed my hands before opening that drawer? Hmmm.) I did the same for the arbols. (I got a second, separate jar out for those. I wonder if I washed my hands before opening that drawer? Maybe I should go clean knobs.)
A. came downstairs in the middle of this and remarkably did _not_ start coughing, altho _even with the hood fan on, the window open and the slider open, she could definitely smell the pepper. She wanted to know when the dress we ordered her on Amazon would arrive. I said, I can’t look that up right now, but I’ll do that in about an hour. Then I asked her to leave so I could go back to running the grinder.
I had initially thought about making some kind of hot sauce, but I ultimately settled on just having powdered dried pepper. Hopefully, this will be used much more consistently than when it was whole dried peppers hidden in a canister behind R.’s random stuff.
Honestly, I’m a little terrified at how powerful this stuff is. You would think that after a couple decades, even arbols would be milder, but I’m thinking maybe not.