grinding dehydrated peppers

[habitat-gardener]

What do you use to grind your dehydrated peppers? I have a coffee grinder I got free locally, and it takes a few tries to get powder with a bunch of unground pieces. I guess that's ok...but wondering if anyone has found something better. I did discover that breaking the dried peppers into smaller pieces before grinding, so that the area around the blades is packed more solidly, is helpful.

[Mark_Thompson]

Small food processor and my blender have both worked for me.

[worth1]

Since I started dealing with dried chilies differently I don't often make the powder anymore.
What I used to do was chop them up put in food processor and then the blender.
Then off to the burr mill coffee grinder that I modified and run them through it.
By modified I mean I took it apart and put shims in it to make the milling burrs as close as possible without them touching on the finest setting.
Took some fancy measurements to do this but it makes a pretty good powder by sifting and running through again.
Even the folks that make this stuff will sift and re grind the product.
It's a lot of work.

[pondgardener]

This year I started grinding habaneros and cayennes. I first used a regular coffee grinder to break them up, then transfer to a burr grinder to break up the seeds and get a fine powder. Yes, it's a lot of work but well worth it, depending on how you plan to use the finished product.

[pepperhead212]

I always use my spice grinder for grinding dried peppers, and never have any problems with seeds or skins, as long as they are totally dry. And here's something that I always do - I grind them outside, on my back deck, and try to make sure it is on a day with some breeze, so I can make sure I arrange it so the dust blows away from me!

I don't grind too much at a time, especially the habs. The Thai peppers I grind the most of, as my cayenne powder.

[bjbebs]

For powder they need to be very dry. Into the small cuisinart and then the spice grinder. If making mash then just the cuisinart. The large cuisinart hardly gets used as the little chopper does such a good job. Can't stand plastic gloves and have paid the price many times but I do wear a mask. Probably the only person who had masks laying around before the virus. When working over the sink anything that goes down seems to react with water and wants to blow up in your face. I call this hot pepper gas.

[Shule]

I just use my blender, and it grinds up without too much work. Tapping the pulse button every second or two is very helpful where just running the blender doesn't work. A higher speed isn't always better, either (initially).

[rdback]

Years ago a grinder came out called Magic Bullet. They were hawking them on TV for $119.99, plus a bonus unit FREE! Woohoo. Anyway, people were buying it, them selling the second one at some reduced price. Eventually there were so many out there, people just started giving them away or donating them.

Short story long, I use one of these. Completely pulverizes dried peppers, in short order. I go straight from the Bullet into a fine mesh strainer. Anything too big gets dumped back into the Bullet....and repeat. It's also the only thing I use the Bullet for, so I don't have to worry about making habanero coffee or some such.

Lastly, Walmart was running a special on the basic setup (which is all you need) for $15, delivered to your home. Might be worth checking out.

[FarmerShawn]

I have an antique hand operated corn grinder that produces the best result, but it's slow. This year I had a lot, so I used my Ninja blender first, then sifted and put what still needed grinding into my coffee burr grinder. That's much faster, but also makes more real fine powder.

[Danny]

We mostly use a mortar and pestle. Grind it as fine as needed each time.

[zeedman]

Like several others, I use a blender to make pepper powder. If I don't want seeds as part of the powder, I grind lightly, strain out the seeds, and continue grinding. If grinding hot peppers, I either do so outdoors, or in front of the range exhaust fan.

[worth1]

Since I get my dried peppes I have to let them get really crispy and dry before I grind them.
The air-conditioned house does this for me at no extra charge.
As of late I just take out what I need and grind them up in my blade type coffee grinder.

But mostly I rehydrate them in warm water to get what need.
This is the traditional way and in my opinion a very good option for traditional cooking of said peppers.
It's more time and work but well worth it.

[karstopography]

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Trying out this Adhoc Pepe chili pepper mill. Cannot be in a hurry with this and it’s a good forearm workout. Produces a fine flake, not quite powder and much smaller than ordinary pepper flakes.

I dried these peppers mostly on the copper surface. It gets over 145° on the sunniest and hottest of days. The peppers also spent a short stint in the BGE, but that was around 130-150° over a minuscule amount of post oak smoke.

Corbaci peppers produce a tasty sweet paprika. I removed 98% of the seeds, but maybe a few got in the mix.

I’m going to keep drying these various peppers for powder, flake and leaving them whole. There’s a surprising amount of flavor in the ground up Corbaci and I’m going to see what other varieties bring to the table.

[mama_lor]

It's very important indeed to do a final dehydration right before grinding. Even so, if the peppers are particularly sweet and a bit more thick walled (like the elephant ear type vs the small chillis), that sugar content will retain some water and give a more chunky grind no matter what you do.
I use a Kitchen aid blender (5KSB555). I used to use the coffee grinder also, worked great, but it's kinda small and also fried my grinder after a few uses.

[karstopography]

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Ground a mix of sun dried pepperocini, Shishito, and corbaci peppers today. Really pleased how this tastes. Removed a high percentage of the seeds, but a few got into the mix.

Taste is sweet, there’s a tiny capsaicin heat, very faintly there, but just overall delicious pepper taste. Put it into the blender so it is anywhere from a fine powder to a fine flake.

Haven’t done the cayenne yet, that’s another day.

[karstopography]

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So, I bought this grinder off Jeff Bezos. I ground the previously blender ground stash much finer.
Wow! What flavor the finer grind brought out! Who knew homemade paprika was so darn good!

[worth1]

People would be amazed as to where some of our products come from.
We normally think of the big potato plants in the north west that make things like McDonald's French fries and potato chips.
On the other hand much of this stuff comes from places like India and so on.
There is a lot of hand work going on.
I saw one video while researching paprika powder that was interesting.
They were running the chilies through a grinder and then sifting the powder.
Back and forth they would go until it was all a fine powder.
Looked like all these people were running around barefoot.

[karstopography]

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My collection of ground pepper. Three batches of mild paprika are a mix of pepperocini, Corbaci and Shishito and different levels of grind.
Then the three hot peppers, Cayenne, Poblano (Ancho) and Cristal. The Cristal is hotter than the Cayenne. I store these in the freeze inside another freezer bag.

My goal is to greatly increase the output next season. I still could get some more this season if the weather improves. I still have a lot of green poblanos out on the plants, along with some other types. I’d love to get more Ancho powder. I have more whole dried cayenne stockpiled. don’t want any dehydrated in a dehydrator peppers, they have to be dried on the copper in the sun or in the BGE over a wood or charcoal smoke.

We took out three trees last weekend and that way increases the light hitting the copper sheet in the afternoon. Now, that table will get full sun from 9 or 10 am until almost sundown. That should help, before the shade hit about 2 pm and I had to be home to mve the table into the patches of full sun, but even then by 4 or 5, it was shade. The sporadic to constant rain and humidity has been too much for sun drying lately. I’m going to get more proficient controlling the temperature of the BGE. I can dial in any temperature from 200-700°, but getting below 160° and maintaining it is really tricky.

[worth1]

What you need is a room dehumidifier.
Most of my peppers dry in the kitchen whether I like it or not.
The color is astounding.

[worth1]

You might also consider preserving some of those dried peppers in bourbon whisky and olive oil to make a somewhat like piri piri sauce.
My suggestion would be Evan Williams because I consider Jack Daniel's to be over priced garbage.
This is a Portuguese thing.