Dehydrating Red Sheppard Peppers

Dehydrating is a great way to preserve the season’s bounty especially when time is tight. Last year we purchased the Excalibur 3926T and have enjoyed using it to put up peaches, apricots, bananas, strawberries and an assortment of hot and mild peppers. It’s quick and easy and relatively fail proof (even our over done apricots could have been resurrected but instead became Gussy snacks – Gus is the youngest of our three Labrador Retrievers).

The day before my departure for the “big baby boy birthing event” I discovered a drawer full of red Sheppard peppers I’d forgotten about in the fridge. Now, things are a little blurry (lack of sleep, baby excitement and all) so I don’t recall our original plans for these beauties but with a limited amount of time I opted on dehydration. It’s so easy I feel kind of ridiculous for outlining the steps below. The only thing to watch is the amount of time you leave them in your machine, as it’s better to under do it and add more time, than to end up with a bunch of Gussy snacks.

DEHYDRATING RED PEPPERS:

• wash red peppers well
• cut off stems and remove seeds
• slice into strips about 1-11/2 inches wide (or in small pieces…the strips/pieces will dry quicker than whole peppers…believe me we’ve done it both ways and our small whole habañeros took days to properly dry)
• place them on the drying racks
• adjust the dehydrator to the vegetable setting and set the timer

We originally set the timer for 8 hours and added a couple more hours after checking them the next morning. The thicker peppers were still a little soft and squishy in the middle but a few more hours did the trick.  Store in a glass mason jar.