Long Island Gardening Community Resource

Given the right care, even one hot pepper plant can produce an over-abundance of peppers. In this case, between my neighbor and I, we had about 20 plants. That is a load of peppers, many of which get neglected and go bad (for one reason or another).

So the other day (the day before the first dip in temperatures around here) I went out to his yard and mine and picked all the peppers and tomatoes I could find that were still good. There were so many peppers, sweet and hot. I was left with a great opportunity. What to do with them though? I have dried peppers before in a dyhydrator and it worked good. I find that it uses heat and therefore gives the preserved food a cooked flavor (not that it’s bad, but it does use low heat). I was also concerned it could catch on fire.

I found Alton Brown’s technique to be very interesting. He makes a dyhydrator with 1 box fan, paper air-conditioning filters, and 2 bungee cords and while it takes a bit longer to dry, it preserves the food with only air, no heat. I have never used this technique, but the next time I want to dry produce, you can bet Im going to try it. The reason I did not want to dry the peppers this year is because I dried so many of them a few years ago that I am still going through them. Basically, I don’t need them right now. So Ill try something new. I thought I would experiment with simple recipes that can last a while.

Hot Sauce!

I made two kinds.

1. Poblano Punch

Ingredients:

• About 15 Fresh Poblano Peppers (Green, Red or mixed)
• 1-2 Carrots
• 2-3 heads of garlic
• 1 or more cups of apple cider vinegar
• 1/2 cup of white vinger
• 1 cup of water or more
• juice of 1-2 limes
• 1 teaspoon or more salt
• 1 onion
• Other Spices: Turmeric, Cumin, Dried Oregano
• Hardware: Blender, Rubber Gloves, Bottling Supplies, Aluminum Foil

Roast Garlic in aluminum foil. Cut off top 1/4 of garlic head, place in aluminum foil. Drizzle a bit of olive oil on it and wrap it up and put it in 350 degree oven for a while (30 mins or so – until it smells unbelievable). After you put it in the oven, start roasting the peppers. I use a cast iron pan and just pop the peppers in there on medium to medium-high heat. Keep flipping them once they blister up nice and black so they get blackened most of the way around. Chop and saute an onion in a little olive oil for a few minutes. Chop the carrot and simmer in the water for about 15 mins and then let it cool down a bit. Take the peppers out of the pan and place into a paper bag or put them in a bowl and cover them (anything to trap the steam coming off the peppers). After about 10-15 minutes, take the peppers out and remove skins. They should come off easily, but could be a bit finiky. Don’t stress if some will not come off, it’s no big deal. Some people like to remove the seeds here, but I just pop off the tops and throw the peppers into the blender. This is HOT sauce.

Once the garlic and carrots cool down a bit, add them to the blender along with the onion, juiced lime, salt, vinegars, and the rest of the ingredients. Many recipes add a little sugar. I would have but forgot it and it was still good. Blend it together and add more water and/or vinegar to get the right consistency you want.

As I was making hot sauce I saw it was kind of hard to mess it up if you have the right ingredients. So at the end, I was adding more water, more vinegar, some garlic powder, some dried oregano, turmeric, cumin. And it came out really really good. Actually, it was a bit milder than I thought it would be, but I liked that too. Because of this and because I had a million more peppers, I decided to make a REALLY HOT sauce.

2. Jalapeño de Plainview

Ingredients:

• Some tomatoes (roma, san marzano – for roasting)
• 3 heads of garlic
• 1 teaspoon of salt or more
• 1 cup of water (or more)
• 1 1/2 cups (or more) of vinegar (white or cider)
• 20-25 jalapeño chiles
• 1-2 ripe mangos

Cut off the tops of the peppers and put them into a small saucepot with the water. Put the heat to medium/medium-hot and bring to boil. Lower heat to low for a few minutes and shut off heat. Let cool.

Roast garlic the same way as above recipe. I made both recipes in the same night, so I used the same batch of roasted garlic. Cut tomatoes in half lengthwise. Warm up a pan and add a little oil. Place tomato halves flat side down until browned a bit. Chop up mango.

Add all ingredients to the blender and blend away. Add more liquids, salt or more fresh chiles to taste. Bottle and give to friends. It can keep in fridge for a long time, if it lasts that long.

Onions and Peppers

I bought a 50 lb. bag of onions last month at a big farm stand out east and have been keeping it in the garage. I also had an overabundance of sweet peppers, so it was fairly obvious to me what I needed to do. Saute a mass amount of onions and peppers, like the vendors at the Jets games. Then, borrow a pressure cooker from my friend and bottle it. It was the firs time I used a pressure cooker by myself. The results were fair.

Chop the onions and peppers in fairly large pieces, and remove all the seeds and veins of the peppers. Then saute them in batches with a bit of olive oil and salt.

Fill sterilized bottles with onions and peppers. Use pressure cooker to finish bottling process. I will write a later article about how to use a pressure cooker, once I master the technique. Right now, I am a mere novice. Only two of the bottles actually closed properly, however, after a night in the fridge, the rest closed as well. I don’t trust them enough to take them out of the fridge though.

So hopefully the peppers and onions will hang around a while. They are quite versatile for a boost of flavor many dishes. They add sweet, savory, and down home flavor, especially because the peppers were grown in our backyards (as organically as organic can be). Just today, I used it in some leftover pasta to give it some depth of flavor. Top a steak with it, or the famous “Sausage, Peppers, and Onions,” or stuff them in a baked squash.

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