Ingredients and Tools
- Any chili pepper or blend of capsicum peppers that you may have on hand
- Any amount that you want to dehydrate for dried chili flakes
- You’ll need a dehydrator, Air Fryer with dehydration function, or a convection oven with very low temperature settings
Pepper Blend and Other Ideas
Hot Habanero Blend
- 3 parts habanero
- 1 part poblano
- 1 part bell pepper
Southwest Blend
- 3 parts poblano
- 1 part jalapeño
- 1 part garlic
Recipe Instructions
- Preheat the dehydrator to 130˚F. This is why ovens can be a difficult choice for drying peppers as many ovens don’t often go below 250-200˚F.
- Cut the caps off of the peppers then thinly slice each pepper so that they can dehydrate evenly. We usually recommend to slice peppers anywhere between 1/8 to 1/16 inch thick while some people prefer bigger slices. We find slicing, even habanero, peppers in half doesn’t offer an efficient dehydration state. Cutting peppers thinner allows them to dehydrate faster and be able to break up easily.
- Depending on how thick the peppers are sliced and the exact equipment you’re using, this can usually take anywhere from 12-24 hours for a good, dry pepper that can be broken up and crushed.
- Once the peppers are brittle to the touch, they can be placed into a plastic bag and crushed or you can use a mortar and pestle to grind the peppers to create chunky pepper flakes that can be used on all sorts of foods. You can also use a knife and cutting board to provide a more even, but coarse chop throughout the dried peppers.
Notes
- You can sieve the flakes from the pepper dust and put the dust in a seasoning shaker to have a variety of pepper spice options.
- We highly recommend using a dehydrator or Air Frying machine with dehydration feature or Instant Pot attachment type device for drying your own chili flakes. Ovens and toaster ovens can be used but the result is often tastes burned due to the higher temperature limitations.
- After cutting off the caps, the entire rest of the pepper can be used for making dry pepper flakes. The fleshy fruit of the pepper, the membrane, and the seeds are all great components for making dried pepper flakes.
