How to Make Ground Cayenne Pepper from Your Garden Peppers
We love gardening and our hobby has been a great way to relax, slow down and even feed our family! We love being able to head outside to pick tomatoes for dinner and cut herbs from our herb garden to season a dish. It is a wonderful feeling to grow your own food and an even better to preserve it for the pantry for upcoming seasons.
Cayenne Peppers are a medium-hot chili pepper. They are hotter than a jalapeno, by a lot, but not the hottest you can find. Cayenne is amazing for your body and your health. This pepper is thought to increase digestion and boost metabolism, and also include properties that are anti-inflammatory. In addition to these great qualities, the cayenne pepper adds some amazing flavor to your cooking and meal prep!
Growing cayenne is actually very simple. If you plan and work ahead, start your seeds ahead of time indoors about 8-10 weeks before the last frost date, then plant out your seedlings when the soil is warm and your seedlings are strong. You can also plant the pepper seeds directly into the ground, or raised bed. All you need to do from here is care for your growing plant! Water when soil needs moisture, use a cage or plant stake to support your plant as it grows, and enjoy seeing the flowers blossom, then become your cayenne peppers!
You have peppers, now what? You can use your peppers in so many ways! Before you start making any of these ideas make sure to wash and dry your peppers. I suggest wearing glove during preparation so that the heat doesn’t stay with you.
Ground cayenne: For this method (the inspiration for this post) I start by drying our peppers. I have a dehydrator that we use regularly, but you can also dry outside, indoors, or in the oven. This is where a little reading and knowing your preferences or space will point you in the right direction. If you are air drying, make sure you have plenty of ventilation. We use a dehydrator because it is consistent and one less thing to monitor and worry about. Once the peppers are dry, you can add them to the food processor until ground and smooth. SO Simple!!
Sauces: There are LOTS and LOTS of recipes online available to make your own hot sauce. We haven’t tried this yet, but next time we grow cayenne I know that my husband would appreciate the attempt at a hot sauce of our own. He loves adding hot sauce to his food and we have a wide variety in our pantry.
Other: There are lots of ways to use peppers. This post is about drying to increase your spice cabinet, but here are a few ideas of what you can do with your pepper harvest. Add fresh cayenne to your stir-frys and every day cooking. You can pickle peppers and can them to enjoy later. Make a ketchup, vinegar or infused olive oil with these beauties. The possibilities are many and no matter what you decide, you are sure to add some flavor to your life with your own homegrown peppers!
That is really all there is to it. The process of growing plants calms me down and brings me a lot of joy and pride. When veggies and herbs start to appear I get excited and following that is happiness when we can use what we have grown. When I open the cabinet and see spices we have grown I am filled with a sense of accomplishment that can’t be described properly in this post. I hope you can one day feel the same fulfillment that we do growing our own food.
How do you hot peppers in your home? Let us know in the comments! As always, thank you for reading and joining us on this journey. Simply, Beth