Re: [CH] Spice mill or grinder - Follow-up

Jonathan Smillie (jonathan.smillie@gmail.com)
Thu, 30 Sep 2010 08:51:15 -0400 

  It sounds like the VitaMix might be the way to go. Thanks to all who 
recommended it; I will hunt around for one. I have one of those "as seen 
on TV" dehydrators as well... I've used it to dry a couple of 
generations of chiles and quite a few years' worth of rosemary and basil 
leaves as well.

The other question I have is (and the VitaMix approach might deal with 
this) - I find that no matter how well I dehydrate my chiles, after the 
powder has sat around in jars or bags for a while, it tends to clump a 
bit because of residual moisture (either in the chiles or perhaps local 
humidity). There's the old trick of putting a few grains of rice in with 
the powder to absorb moisture, but has anyone done anything a bit more 
high-tech? Food-grade silica gel, for example? What have you had your 
best results with?

On 9/28/2010 5:50 PM, Terry Pogue wrote:
> One of the gals on my VitaMix list uses chop sticks to get any bit up from under the blades. Don't know if that would help with chiles or not
>   Terry Pogue 
>
> My Foodie Photos
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/terrypogue/collections/
>
> On Sep 28, 2010, at 11:04 AM, Uncle Steve wrote:
>
>> I use almost the same method. To make the process faster I removed the blades from the "dry" Vitamix  canister and sharpened the blunt edges to very sharp.  You can adjust your final product to a very fine powder to corse flakes by adjusting the speed, time and the volume of peppers you grind at one time.
>>
>>
>> At 9:54 AM -0400 9/28/10, Jeff Thompson wrote:
>>> For large batches of peppers, I use an old "as seen on TV" food dehydrator
>>> to dry my peppers (in the garage, else my wife would kill me) and then use
>>> my Vitamix blender, with the dry/grains container, to grind them...
>>
>> -- 
>> Enjoy the heat,
>> "Uncle Steve" Nearman
>>
>> ~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~
>>           Uncle Steve's HOT Stuff
>> Anything&  Everything about Chiles
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>