If you have an abundance of hot peppers, there must be a reason. A person usually does not acquire a profusion of hot peppers accidentally, but just in case, here are examples of what clever, industrious people all over the world do with their hot peppers.
Culinary
One quarter of the earth’s population eats peppers every day according to legalnomads.com. India produces more chilies than anyone. This discussion will not pretend to tell anyone how to cook because libraries and the Internet are flush with recipes for curries, stuffed peppers, chili relleños, salsas, dips, chili verde, spicy stir fries, pickled peppers, pepper sauce and a list that never ends. Just think of the plethora of hot sauce brands such as Dave’s Insanity, Inner Beauty, Secret Aardvark, Ass on Fire and plain old Tabasco®.
Stonehenge in England and the Egyptian pyramids were built between 3000 and 2000 BCE. Pepper scholars claim that by that time, Native Americans had been cultivating peppers for 3000 years already.
Peppers are native to the Americas and began spreading after Christopher Columbus and other Europeans sailed in, and now there are now at least 50,000 varieties of sweet and hot peppers around the world.
Try this
Here’s a recipe. Get a clean jar. Carefully and respectfully cut off the tops of several long, thin peppers. Other shapes will do also, but they will need to be cut into rings or slices or your favorite shapes. Cram all the peppers and pieces into the clean jar with a couple cloves of garlic. Pour in warm vinegar. Screw on a lid and you’re finished – pepper sauce. After sampling the sauce for a while, you can use the pickled peppers in wintertime soups if you like a little spice in your life.
Ristras are strings of peppers held together by threading nylon twine or durable thread of some kind through the tops of the peppers. Thin-skinned varieties such as cayenne, Sandia, Cascabel, de Arbol, Rezha or Guajillo are preferred because thicker-skinned varieties will begin to mold before they dry. The cook simply plucks the peppers from the string when it is time to cook. Ristras are decorative also, and in some communities they are valuable for bartering.
Put them in the dryer
There are catalogs full of various food dehydrators useful for drying hot chilies, but here is cheaper strategy. First, cut up your peppers into medium sized pieces. Be careful to wear gloves to protect your hands, and do not rub your eyes, nose or sensitive body parts during this operation. Place the pieces on sheets of wax paper covering plates or cookie sheets. Then firmly install the cookie sheets covered by pepper pieces on the dashboard of a vehicle on a very hot day. Any vehicle will do, but old clunker pickups, rust spots optional, are ideal, plus there will be a lingering, invigorating after-aroma for a few days.
Depending on the weather, it might take two days or so to thoroughly dry the pepper pieces on your dashboard, but then what do you do with dried pepper pieces? Some folks are fans of freezing peppers, which is another successful preservation method, but why dry something only to freeze it? Well-dehydrated pepper pieces could be kept in a jar until needed, or a person could make spicy paprika. Grind the pepper pieces into a coarse powder or a flaky version of powder using a mortar and pestle or a coffee grinder. A combination of Alma, Leutschauer and cayenne make a tasty, colorful paprika. Depending on how much a family uses, a pint jar of spicy paprika might outlast your smart phone.
Or stick them in your socks
Pepper spray and pepper products have been used as weapons since time immemorial. The Indian army experimented with grenades that exploded pepper powder out to the target, and dried hot pepper flakes were thrown at prisoners in Japan as punishment. Therefore, it makes sense to use homemade pepper spray to discourage garden pests such as cabbage loopers and spider mites. Cayenne peppers are especially effective.
Sprinkling pepper powder in an anthill ought to encourage ants to move on. Also, mice and other critters can be provoked to relocate if their haunts are misted with pepper spray.
You can puree peppers with garlic and peppermint in a blender and let the puree soak awhile in a bucket of water until the water is hot, so to speak. The leftover puree can be placed as a deterrent mulch on a garden bed, but the spray should be applied fairly heavily to plants affected by pests. It might not last long, so spray again after watering or a rain. If pests are still around, spray again. Be sure to rinse the produce well or your collards or beans will for sure shock your taste buds.
A curious side note is birds do not have the gene that senses capsaicin, the chemical compound in peppers that burns our mouths, so they have no problem grazing for bugs sprayed with hot pepper spray.
Capsaicin is widely used in the pharmaceutical industry in a variety of products, such as salves and lotions that a pepper picker could replicate at home. According to diynatural.com, “Chili peppers are often used for topical applications to help relieve joint and nerve pain including osteoarthritis.” Homemade salve makers would need to be cautious not to introduce too much capsaicin into the salve.
Same with balms and lotions, but the point is, heat in hot peppers can be useful and healing. A bit of capsaicin fights indigestion and it is lethal to H. pylori bacteria, which cause indigestion. Some folks in really cold climates even put cayenne pepper powder in their socks to keep their feet warmer at night, though the pepper powder might discolor the socks.
Also capsaicin has been used as an anesthetic because it can generate heat in a specific location just like popular over-the-counter creams and balms. It is also being studied as an anti-carcinogenic because it has been shown to inhibit the growth of certain types of cancer cells, so eat your peppers.
So…
A person can mix a bit of cayenne powder with honey and lemon juice in water and drink moderately to help flush toxins out of the body. You can dehydrate peppers to create your own spicy paprika to sprinkle on lentils or pizzas or stir fries, and you can give it away for Christmas. You can use chilies to make a healing balm or chase away garden pests. The list is long because, for possibly 8000 years, humans have been finding ways to use hot peppers and not just for food. Chilies also test our personal fortitude because, according to Adam Richman, “A good spicy challenge strikes a balance between flavor and fear.”