[phoebe]

I want to try out a brownie recipe that calls for micro-waving dried ancho peppers--yes, I said brownies and I said peppers. You need to dry out the chilies further in order to run them through a spice grinder to get a powder which is then added to the brownie mixture. The problem is that I don't have a microwave. What can I do instead?

 

[cape chef]

Dear Pheobe,

Just oven dry them slowly.
also..enjoy this thread from a while back. Chocolate and chilies aren't so strange around here
Enjoy and good luck

http://www.cheftalkcafe.com/forums/s...te+and+peppers

 

[phoebe]

Dear Cape Chef,

Wow! The recipes on that thread look wonderful.

Dumb question: how low should I set my oven to avoid burning the chilies? Or should I just play around with the temp and use my nose to gauge when drying shifts to burning?

Thanks for your help!

 

[mudbug]

You can set your oven on it's lowest setting and leave the peppers on a rack in the oven overnight. If it's not humid where you are, you may be able to just set them out in the sun if you can keep pests away. If you have a food dehydrator, you could use that too.

 

[suzanne]

I worked in 3 different restaurants for a chef who used a lot of different chiles, all of them dried. We would stem and seed them, and spread them out on sheet pans; then and put them into very hot ovens (500 degree F) for 30 seconds or less, just until we could smell them. They were already dried; the idea was that we just needed to bring the volatile oils to the surface. Yes, use your nose.

 

[marmalady]

You can also dry them further as the Mexicans do, by placing them on a hot, dry griddle on the stovetop; just watch carefully as they'll burn quickly, and be sure to turn them often.

If you do the oven thing, place the peppers on a rack over a sheet pan; that way, all the surfaces of the peppers will be exposed to the heat.