Cycad, that is a good question. I cannot find any record but I will ask the plant people tomorrow. I don't recall seeing them but I am birding most of the time.

Tom - I passed your website on to someone from Daves Garden who is interested in some kind of project involving hot peppers.

All if have to do is smell my hot pepper sauce and I begin sneezing.

I have a bunch of what he supermarket called ghost peppers in the freezer whole. can I cut hem in half, put them in the stove to dry them out and then make a powder out of them. I will also be ordering your powders in a little while. Can I order them from your website or just e-mail you what I want.??

Yes, you can dry them in the oven, but I don't do that personally, so I can't give you a time and temperature. Now if you mean actually on top of the stove, I would imagine that would work, but have no clues on how well it would work. Mmmm ghost peppers, put them in a smoker grill at about 200 for 4 hours and use something good like pecan wood, and then finish drying in the oven, and you will make some great smoky tasting powder that tastes like it belongs when you put it in baked beans or BBQ meat.
Neither my pepper website, or my cycad jungle website has automatic purchasing because I want to give personal service and I charge the direct cost of shopping instead of charging an over priced charge that is done automatically. People just email me. Tom

PS, Franklin, if it is going to be a while, and if you like, send me a private message and give me your address and I can send you a sample packet of smoked ghost powder in a regular envelope for free, just to get a good taste of it.

herbie43 said:Tara if you used 5 ghost peppers in your hot sauce it must be very, very hot. I also make a hot sauce. care to exchange recipes, ??

Sending you a t-mail.

My ghost plants are producing so well! Thanks cycadjungle for this thread, and also talking about drying/grinding them into a powder! I'm going to give this a try...

I just saw this thread yesterday. Sorry I did not see it before. This is such an interesting subject. And cycadjungle, you are one smart pepper I seldom eat a meal with out some kind of "salsa" on my meal. I know for sure will be trying some of your hints for powder making. Please keep the information coming.

Tom - Just for the heck of it I'm going to try and dry 5 hot peppers. do I remove the seeds before I dry them??

Thanks

I have been watching and listening to this discussion for a while, and think the information shared here is flatly genious.

Loving peppers and having grown many, I am still not nearly knowledgeable enough on the subject to blurt in much that would be of value.

This is one of the most informative and well done threads I have found since being here on ATP.

You have created a very good thing here Cycadjungle Tom!

David,

Me to

And of course me

Me too!

Tom - I took 5 of those "ghost peppers" and dried them in my oven. they came out great. should I remove the seeds before grinding. I'm just trying this to see if I could.

thanks

too

DavidofDeLand said:
This is one of the most informative and well done threads I have found since being here on ATP.

You have created a very good thing here Cycadjungle Tom!

I'm debating mentally among Douglah, smoked ghost pepper and Primo powders. I think that your idea of "less hot" is like my idea of PLENTY hot.

Frank, if you're grinding them to use as powder, I would take as many seeds out as possible... but it probably isn't strictly necessary.

In the spirit of Science:

Pick the seeds out of 1/2 or 2/3 of them and grind that way.

But then ADD those seeds to the other 1/2 or 1/3 and grind them all together. See which one you like better. They may contribute some flavor. Or there may be very little difference, in which case you can save a step.

I think most seeds are killed by most oven treatments. Someone told me never to heat seeds over 95 F ... but what about climates where daily highs can go over 100? They don't seem to be seedless barren deserts.

When I make my hot pepper sauce I boil the peppers and seeds in oil for one minute and then let it simmer for 5 more minutes. I leave the seeds in because i am to lazy to taket hem out before I run them through the food processor and the original recipe which I adapted my recipe from calls for the seeds to be left in.

yesterday after I tried the peppers I didn't want to put them into the food processor so I took one of those metal food smashes and did it that way. came out good even with the seeds and it was very hot. my main reason for trying it was to see if I could get the peppers to be dry enough to make a powder ou of them and it worked.

I'm sorry I haven't been around for a few days. I'm down to .4 of a gig left on my data plan on my tablet and that has to last 8 more days, so I'm getting on the old computer with dial up AOL.
I'm glad the ghosts dried well. For me, as far as with Bhuts go, I leave the seeds in the powder. The seeds do not have a good taste that you want to keep, but in the case of this pepper, they are not so bad that they will give your powder an extra bad taste. Removing seeds isn't easy and takes a bit of time, so unless it makes a big difference in taste, leave them in. I pull the seeds for Chocolate Habs, and for yellow Fataliis, because they seem to get an obvious bitter taste to the powder. I think anything with a strong taste can handle having the seeds still in it, but a weaker tasting pepper is better with the seeds out.
I would also pull the seeds for making sauce with something like a yellow Fatalii because you want the fruity taste to come out, but the seeds are fine with most peppers for sauces.
On another note, I just finished with an experiment that has taken a year and a half. If you are from the south, it is a good chance you use vinegar on your greens. Some people like to use the vinegar with those little green peppers in it for a bit of pepper taste. Well, what would you say the heat level of the vinegar would be if you put an entire Moruga Scorpion (at 2,209,000 SHUs) into a half pint of vinegar and infused it with that pepper for a year and a half? If you said, really hot, like I was thinking, we all would be wrong. I thought it would make some really nasty vinegar to put on my greens, but it wasn't all that hot at all. There was an obvious taste of the pepper, but not the heat. Any guesses why?
Capsaicin is an alkaline substance and vinegar is an acid. It has to be that the vinegar neutralized the percieved heat, or alkalinity of the pepper so that all you got was the taste but not the brutal heat. It's good to know, but now that makes me wonder what peppers would be best for this purpose since the taste will be most important instead of the expected heat. This has made me think about sauces as well. For all those people who want to make really hot sauce, but then add vinegar in that sauce, that would mean that the longer the bottle sits around, the less hot that sauce would end up being. Many people want that acid because a sauce that has a pH of 4.5 or lower is able to sit on the shelf without refrigeration. This also would mean that to have the hottest sauce, you would either have to make a sauce that needs to be placed in the refrigerator, or make the sause with the vinegar, or other acid, and just use it up as fast as possible before it gets less hot. Just thinking out loud. Tom

I was also thinking about chilling it to preserve the heat. Most organic compounds are destroyed by oxygen, and destroyed faster when warm than when cold.

When I made my own pepper vodka from ground Thai chillis, I soaked it in the freezer for weeks and months. The alcohol kept it from freezing, and my thought was that cold would keep the flavor compounds and capsaicin from oxidizing.

I wonder at what temperature vinegar freezes? Maybe you could soak and store it in the freezer, and then take it out to use it or sell it, with a "shelf life" that depends on how hot you want it.

I was never very happy with my home-made "pertsovka". It was kind of nasty in addition to being hotter than I really wanted it to be. Adding just a little cinnamon schnapps gave it a different flavor plus a little sweetness to go with the heat.

Now I'm thinking I should try again with hot chillis other than just dried "supermarket Thai peppers".