It has been a decent pepper summer. The rest of the garden was seriously having some issues because of slugs and moist and other stuff. But these pepper seedlings which I bought in April were a decent deal. I kept them in pots with a minimum of 35 centimeters diameter enough for them to have a decent root space.
Already earlier this summer the 'Chinese 5 colour pepper' plant was giving fruits like there was no tomorrow as you were able to read in this post. Now it was time for the true hot ones to be harvested before the sunny days come to an end and the rain takes over, leaving the plant go to waste quite fast.
It was time to harvest the 'Bhut jolokia chocolate' pepper plant which is about 900.000 in heat on the scoville scale aka fireeee 🔥
Now this something to not take lightly at all. As I know everything about this pepper is just super-duper hot, while cutting off the peppers I didn't touch a single one of them. Just a cut of the scissors and holding a plate underneith it to catch them.
The score was quite good, especially considering that this is just from 1 plant and in a relatively cold climate while staying outside.
The green yellow peppers are a mystery pepper. They are also already super hot, but the plant was having some issues and the leaves were already turning yellow which means the plant was using the nutrients from the leaves to survive.
I guess the green pepper would eventually have turned yellow as you can see on one of them. I guess it is something like a yellow habanero although it is not that fat as a normal one. It could also be the yellow bumby, but who knows.?
But this is just the end of the season for it, even though it is not ready. Luckily I will dry them to take the heat as it is.
The drying process
Since these guys are so hot to eat in one piece, it makes more sense to dry them of make a sauce out of it to have more of an option to just use bits of it.
Drying them is actually super easy. I cut them all in half over the length so there is more surface let the moist evaporate. I didn't touch them in any of this, and used gloves for the process.
I'm not kidding you, touching this and then after that touching other body parts is something to regret. Gloves are your friend!!!
Once cut open I put them in the oven all together on a tray. It took 6.5 hours on 70 degrees celsius for them to dry. I tried every now and then with some tweezers to see if there was still moist inside.
Again some disclaimers: I did this on a sunny day so I could have the doors and windows all opened up. The scent coming from the oven is like if you are breathing in pepper spray and is really something to watch out with.
Ventilate the space before everything feels on fire!
The result
I was happy with the result of the drying process! Since I still wasn't sure about the yellow ones so I am keeping them separate for a while.
Hubby tried nibbling a piece of the Bhut Jolokia Chocolate and needed 2 glasses of milk afterwards, so the heat is decent. Did you know these dried peppers sell on the market for like $100 per kilo? Now these dry ones are only a couple of grams and we are using them here ourselves, but more...If you have a plant... go for it!
What I also did was I took a couple of seeds from the most fattest peppers and took them to preserve. This seed preserving takes about two weeks to the air in a dark space and hopefully will give a decent start to fresh seedlings in the winter time.
It feels like every spring I start out to late growing them, so I am going to try a bit earlier this winter.
All in all, I am very happy with the score this year and I will used these dried peppers to grind them and have pepper powder for in the meals. Even better to dose it out because just a single point of these peppers is already way too hot!
Are you a fan of super hot peppers?