Re: [CH] Crushed Red Pepper
Love2Troll (Love2Troll@kc.rr.com)
Fri, 20 Aug 2004 13:06:10 -0500
I'm on my 3rd coffee mill and like the West Bend No 6501 the best so far. Lots of dust flies out unless you cover the inner container top with Saran Wrap first. Strictly for small amounts at a time & works well for a container gardener like me.
Personally, I like flakes for some things and powder for others & I use a fine sieve to seperate. When I want a uniform powder I run it through an OXO hand cranked pepper mill, but that is very tiring job and I'm hoping to upgrade to a better one. What really works well for small amounts is what I call my 'Pocket Pal' grinder. http://www.grindhot.com/catalog.html I don't like the adjusting screw on the top and someday hope to modify by adding a brass gear that could be turned by using thumb & finger instead of using a coin or my thumbnail.
My routine is to first cut the pods in half, remove seeds & freeze pods for a couple days to rupture the cell walls. Then I lightly smoke them for several hours in my electric smoker keeping the temp no higher that 160°F. Then into the dehydrator at 125°F max for as long as it takes.
The goal is to avoid bitterness & preserve the original pod color as much as possible while adding a slight smoke flavor.
JohnT