Smoking Peppers and making Chipotle

[MilesReeder]

I did a quick search of the forum and couldn't see a thread for this so thought I would ask the question....

A shop round the corner from me sells big bowls of green peppers, chilli's and anything else that is basically near it's use by date. How can I turn these peppers into a Chipotle style ingredient that's dry enough to store indefinitely and will add some authentic flavour to my rubs, sauces and chili?

The "Wonder Web of Wow" search came back with a couple of hours smoked at around 220 (which seems a bit too easy!) but has anyone on the forum got some tips on temp, duration and preparation??

Cheers

Miles

[MilesReeder]

Just had a brain wave.......

Lots of recipe's talking about a dehydrator which I don't have..... but, if I put an old school type lightbulb in my ProQ with no stackers, vents open that should dry them out lovely. Could also use a ceramic plug in heater that you use for vivarium's. Similar to a Jerky drying box I made a few years back but got rid of during a house move.

Is there nothing that a ProQ can't do?

[Gary Morris]

You can do it in your oven, I looked into this before I bought a dryer, works the same though. Set it to the lowest heat setting and wedge the door open to let the moisture out, put them on racks and turn every few hours, not sure how long it would take though. Probably in the region of 8 hrs ish. Oh and swap the levels around if more than 1. You could smoke them first and finish off in the oven?

or

I would have thought a low temp smoke on the BBQ would be the same - I'm still a virgin as far as BBQ'ing, so I don't want to mislead you.

have fun
Gary

[gazz_46]

Take a look at this peach chilli chipotle BBQ sauce post for my version, link below

viewtopic.php?f=40&t=3009

[Tiny]

Hi
I often smoke roast chillis, peppers and garlic at the end of a cook. When all the meat is done and resting I pile all the remaining coals up at one end chuck on a cup full of soaked oak chips and then leave them to it. I don't get the drying out but do get them to become very shrivelled and take on a lot of smoke. These then get chopped up and dressed with a spoon of oil and then chucked in the freezer. The oil means they don't seem to form into a single hard lump so you can chisel off portions to add to sauces , rubs or just to embiggen an everyday chilli.

As the weather is evil I currently have a whole shoulder of lamb in the slow cooker with the product of an earlier smoke roast chilli fest adding smokey goodliliciousness to the pot.

Cheers
Tiny

[CyderPig]

Ditto the above.
You can Roast the peppers, skin then smoke., or just do what you do.
Hot smoke .Cold smoke.
Smoked peppers GOOD!!!
Si

[MilesReeder]

Thanks for the suggestions. In the end I put them in the ProQ and used some large chunks of restaurant grade charcoal to keep the temp around 50-60 for about 20 hours. It was easier than I thought as there were some huge chunks in the bag that were happy to just smoulder away.

If anything I would have added more smoke. I was using chips in a can and gave the peppers about 3 cans full over a couple of hours. I think they could have taken a bit more though but they small nice anyway.

Also, a few were as dry as crisps whilst others still had a bit of a bend and were more like the Chipotle's I have got from the Devon Chilli Shop. I could grind the dry ones to a powder but they taste a little charred - in a bad way. The bendy ones are the winners. Also, seeing as it was quite a long cook / drying session it's worth doing more!

<a href="http://s1294.photobucket.com/user/RoccoReeder/media/2013-06-17181458_zps9868c4ce.jpg.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://i1294.photobucket.com/albums/b617/RoccoReeder/2013-06-17181458_zps9868c4ce.jpg" border="0" alt=" photo 2013-06-17181458_zps9868c4ce.jpg"/></a>

[MilesReeder]

Oops... that's not an image! Try again!

[YetiDave]

Those look great! I might have to give it a shot too, I do love chipotle