String of Fires - Still Smoldering

Chili peppers . . . the hot, fiery nectar of the gods.  People of the Americas have been enjoying the flaming goodness for millennia and a day.

 The heat of peppers is measured by the Scoville Scale – so named after Wilbur L. Scoville, a pharmacist, who devised the first modern technique for measuring a pepper’s bite in 1912

Capsaicin is the element of peppers that give them their fire.  This ingredient stimulates chemoreceptor nerve endings in the skin, especially the mucous membranes.  It is thought that including hot peppers in a regular diet will raise metabolism to help burn body fat.

Habañero is considered the hottest pepper available on the general market. 

In our garden we’ve grown Cherry and Jalapeño peppers.  They are not even close to being in the same neighborhood as Habañero on the Scoville scale. But they have plenty of bite.

I set up some strings of peppers to dry naturally.  It took about two months for them to be fully dry.  When dry, they are slightly translucent and the skins are crinkly and brittle.

I pulverized them in a food processor.  I will store them in an airtight container until we need them to spice up a recipe.

I can’t wait!