Drying your own chillies

Much like beetroot and tomatoes, when you grow your own chillies you get an awful lot of the little blighters and can’t always use them up so the solution is to dry them, that way you have loads of dried chilli flakes to use at will and they last.

I was a bit scared of the idea of doing this when my friend Luke suggested it but it’s actually really simple to do and you basically put them away and forget about them, so not time-consuming at all.

So how to dry your own chillies

It’s actually dead easy.

Get yourself a needle and thread (I know it sounds weird but go with me on this), and sew them together, importantly, though, don’t pierce the actual body of the chilli, pierce the needle through the stem and then thread them all on there like a big necklace.Then hang that in your airing cupboard and forget about it.

Really that’s all there is to it. I left mine for about 2 months and they are now all dried and crinkly, perfect for chopping or crushing in a pestle and mortar.

Dead easy! Go try it. I’ll definitely be doing this with all my home-grown chilies from now on.