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dried Dehydrating problems due to humidity (?)

Z

Zodiac_Speaking

I recently dried some of my habanero's and reapers and made sure they were nice and crispy. I then put them in a zip lock bag and sort of hand crushed them until I was satisfied. That was fine for about 1 week but I noticed some of the larger pieces had become somewhat pliable and soft again. IE: not crispy and dry inside the bag.

Admittedly, I did open the bag a few times but I always made sure to get all the air out when closing the bag back up. Anyway, the other night I took the small pieces and put them on wax paper all spread out and placed them into the oven @350 for 10 minutes to try to dry them all back out again. That experiment went horribly wrong. :banghead: I ended up with charcoal.

I ran another batch through the dehydrator last night and once again I got them nice and crispy. I let the pieces cool off for about 15 minutes, placed them into a zip lock bag and then immediately put the bags into the freezer. The humidity where I am is about 80% as of yesterday. Any tips going forward? I plan to keep dehydrating and immediately adding to the frozen bags until the humidity reaches a level where I can put all the pieces into a coffee grinder to make dried spice.

Thoughts?
 
I don't keep mine airtight because you could be trapping water in, any trace of water left in the pepper or even what got into the bag from humidity. I have some reapers that have been crispy/hand-crushable for YEARS! What I keep them in is those black plastic takeout containers with the clear lids. So they stay closed but not airtight. I think that must be the trick because never had an issue.
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I've had them soften up some too. If you look at the ones from the store, they're usually a bit leathery instead of totally crispy. But I've taken to storing them with a bag of silica gel, that seems to help a lot. And toasting them for a minute before using them both helps dry them out and brings a bit of extra flavor.

If I'm making powders, I try to grind them very soon after drying, or if they get soft I put them back in the dehydrator overnight.

@The Hot Pepper 's solution I don't think would work well here in NC, my storage area averages 70% humidity.
 
HellfireFarm said:
@The Hot Pepper 's solution I don't think would work well here in NC, my storage area averages 70% humidity.
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It sounds counterintuitive but it works (here), I also linked to food-grade desiccant packs in my second post.
 
HellfireFarm said:
If I'm making powders, I try to grind them very soon after drying, or if they get soft I put them back in the dehydrator overnight.
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On the subject of making powders, do you do anything other than dry and grind them?

I’ve got some (I believe) reaper, ghost, and scorpion peppers from the seeds you gave me and I’m at a little bit of a loss for how best to preseve them. Powders would be great because you can use just a little.

I tried a bite of what I think was a ghost (im going to,post a please help me identify thread, though I think I have) and while not terrible, nobody else was willing to try after watching my reaction.
 
I actually roast them, then dry and grind. I tried it recently and found it adds to the flavor. You might want to try both ways, see what you like.

The powders are crazy potent! 1/4 tsp is like a whole pepper, probably even more. So a little goes a very long way.

As a side note, I've noticed about a 10:1 ratio from fresh to powder - so 10oz of fresh peppers yields about 1 oz of powder.
 
I actually roast them, then dry and grind.
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That makes good sense, actually. Tthe roasting would enhance the flavor and help dry them. We’ve got both a freeze dryer (malfunctiong at the moment, but we’re working on it) and a dehydrator. We’re just going to have a bumper crop of hot peppers given this weather after a real slow spring start, as I’m sure you understand.

off topic, but I did see bakers creek and another catalog both have real good pepper seed offerings. Going to order early to be prepared for next year. Starting seeds from scratch, learning about grow lights, and seed warmers all while brooding chickens made for a very fun spring. Thank you TheHotapepper.dot.Com.
 
HellfireFarm said:
I've had them soften up some too. If you look at the ones from the store, they're usually a bit leathery instead of totally crispy. But I've taken to storing them with a bag of silica gel, that seems to help a lot. And toasting them for a minute before using them both helps dry them out and brings a bit of extra flavor.

If I'm making powders, I try to grind them very soon after drying, or if they get soft I put them back in the dehydrator overnight.

@The Hot Pepper 's solution I don't think would work well here in NC, my storage area averages 70% humidity.
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How do you "toast them for a minute?" ~ exactly? Thank you all btw.
 
Probably in a hot non-stick pan.
 
I dry the bejeezus outta them bringing them quickly up to 125° then maintain that temperature until I like what I see and feel. This may take many days. Then I crush them into large plastic jars and finish with an inner seal of stretchy plastic wrap under the top. This happens in the dehydrator room where thre's high heat and <40% humidity. Then I store then in the dark at regular room temperature and less than 50% humidity until I'm ready to grind, usually at the end of the season. I've never had a problem with re-humidification.

Once ground to powder, I use the same basic method for storage but use smaller, sturdier 3-4 pound jars. Although I've never seen change in the flakes before grinding, I use a large and radical stainless steel grinder that heats the powder pretty good. I see this as a beneficial form of additional moisture removal and a final sterilization. I've considered storing with oxygen absorbers but never got around to testing that.

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So the roasting definitely enhances the flavors, but it also brings the internal temperature over 165F that kills any possible pathogens - which, for me, is also a required step by regulators for powders being used in spice blends.

@Zodiac_Speaking
For toasting the dry peppers, typically pressing them onto a hot cast iron pan will do it. Stainless steel works too. You're probably familiar with Pati Jinich, she does this a lot.
Here's a decent video on it (not Pati)
 
Roasting sounds like a lot of work. Is that any better than beginning with a super low pH, no rinse, antimicrobial treatment and finishing with a quick blast of increased dehydrator temperature?

I put 17 pounds into the dehydrators yesterday. It gives me the creeps to even think about adding this step.
 
Roasting the fresh peppers isn't really that much more work, and they dry a lot faster afterward.

But the regulatory requirement is "the inside heated above 165F" - because fresh peppers apparently can have pathogens inside (Chile Institute told me exactly the same thing). Since I have to heat them anyway, why not roast? It's actually faster than heating gently.

Not sure what you mean about beginning with a low PH - raw pepper is what it is. Also no idea what you mean about antimicrobial treatment. Always open to new ideas!
 
So here's a boring story, my granny Elva would low temp dry peppers till they were just past leathery then raise the fire to "crisp them up so they don't go bad". If you heat them up to fast you might as well put butter on'em she'd say. That was 50+ years ago and I just found out why. I don't think she ever knew why, but that's how her granny did it. Thanks
 
HellfireFarm said:
Roasting the fresh peppers isn't really that much more work, and they dry a lot faster afterward.

But the regulatory requirement is "the inside heated above 165F" - because fresh peppers apparently can have pathogens inside (Chile Institute told me exactly the same thing). Since I have to heat them anyway, why not roast? It's actually faster than heating gently.

Not sure what you mean about beginning with a low PH - raw pepper is what it is. Also no idea what you mean about antimicrobial treatment. Always open to new ideas!
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Here are two antimicrobial produce treatments. Either is good. No need for all the fancy hardware. I simply put two ounces with two gallons of my acidic water in a large stainless steel pot with the pods contained in a dipping/soaking basket. With my 6.0 water, that ratio should make a rinse of around 2.0 or so.



I like low temp dehydration to preserve the color and other goodies, then give it quick boot of high heat at the end for a final bug killing that ends the drying phase. I don't have trouble getting 165° air and there's very little moisture remaining in the sliced pods.

Another thing I like about soaking the pods is any small, un-noticed hole becomes very apparent with slicing and offers another reason to cull.
 
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