I dehydrate my peppers in a cheapo dehydrator then use a $10 electric coffee grinder from a big box store and grind grind grind.
That perfectly describes my method. Only differences are that the food dehydrator, while cheap as hell, is old and was given to me and the coffee grinder was like 20 bucks at Wal-Mart.
The coffee grinder has a ridiculously short non-extendable power cable (about 1 1/2 feet... no joke...) for supposed "safety reasons" that consistently drives me nuts and, in fact, causes me almost drop the damn thing regularly in normal use and forces me to use it in dangerous ways just to be able to actually *use* it. Way to completely miss the point of safety in the name of some bizarre, loony version of "safety," Mr. Coffee! Let me just say, being forced to *hold* a f***ing coffee grinder while trying to *use* is not safe at all, and who the hell would stick the cord in by accident and forget to check before pressing down on the lid to operate it anyway? Not to mention the lid wouldn't close properly, preventing the thing from starting to begin with based on the design of the unit. When buying I thought you would be able to pull the cord out, which would have been completely acceptable, but no; it almost seems like the company actively to
prevent people from actually using their products--when you look at it that way, I guess they have succeeded to make their product "safe." Can't lose a finger to a coffee grinder you can barely even use to begin with by design! I'm tempted to get a short extension cable to to make the thing more tolerable to use.
The dehydrator also sucks ass--for the peppers I usually dry (small ones like Tabasco) its floor openings, for lack of better word, are too damn big and the peppers always fall to the bottom under the heating coil, and for larger peppers like habaneros some don't even fit well until they've lost some moisture. I may eventually get a halfway decent dehydrator because the current one is such a massive pain in the ass to use (hell, I don't even know what temperature it operates at--not even the instruction manual says, but peppers turn somewhat brown by the time it's done with them, so my guess is too high).
Of course, all peppers are rinsed with warm water first and then de-stemmed before doing anything, but I don't cut them in any way. I may start doing this for the bigger ones next year, even if it's just a slit, to speed up the drying process (and who knows, maybe it'll cause them to turn brown less). And despite how shitty my setup is, it does actually work. A massive PITA and even somewhat dangerous by design, but it works.
Way late Edit: Oops, the brand of coffee grinder is actually Mr. Coffee, not Hamilton Beach. Misdirected criticism. Had to correct that.
