Dehydrating Jalapenos

Over the past four weeks, I'm pretty sure my excitement for dehydrating has been showing.  My dehydrator (Weston Food Dehydrator) was pretty darn frugal, but has already paid for itself!  Peas, blueberries, pineapple, celery, tomatoes, onions and more...  but I've been so busy with 'life' I've fallen behind on posting photos of some of them.

Today is a quick fly-by post to get these pictures out of my computer files and onto the blog!  JALAPENOS.  Oh how my family loves jalapenos.  So much so that I buy them by the large #10 can at Sam's Club.  I can get a huge can for same price as a small jar of jalapenos in the grocery store.  The only problem is that you have a lot of jalapenos to use up.  No worries, I normally refill a store bought jar we keep in the refrigerator and I put the rest of the drained jalapenos into a double freezer Ziplock and store them in the deep freeze, taking out what we need, when we need it.

I love the idea of dehydrating so much more, as any foods I can dehydrate or can is one less thing to worry about losing if (and when) the power goes out.  Living in storm-prone areas, you have to be prepared and having food in storage instead of the deep freeze or refrigerator, means power outages are a non issue.  I like that.  It's also a great way to SAVE MONEY since I can buy this huge can of jalapenos for the same cost as a small 12 oz. jar.

There is no 'recipe' to follow of course... so I'll just show the photos as I did it.

My current dehydrator is just a simple, affordable, 4 tray, Weston Food DehydratorI found at Lowes on sale
but they don't carry them anymore in my local store so I'm linking to them on Amazon for you.

Drain your jalapenos well.  Use plastic gloves - even double glove - to avoid saturating your fingers with jalapeno oils and juices.  If you don't protect your hands and you rub your eye... you'll never fore-go gloves again.

*Place it outside*

Seriously.

You don't want to fill your home with strong jalapenos. It will irritate your eyes!

Jalapeno's are so thin, they dry pretty quickly.  All mine were done in just a few hours one afternoon.

It will depend on your dehydrator - follow the directions for yours.

Mine just turns on - no temperature adjustments - and it took about 4-6 hours.

The thicker slices took longer of course.

I placed mine in ziplocks inside airtight containers.

They won't last long in our house - we use jalapenos in our cooking about 3 times a week.

When I store foods long term I use airtight Mason canning jars.

I would use a FoodSaver, except I don't have one!

I was going to go back Lowe's to get the one on clearance they had but it was gone.

So now I'm saving up to find a little wiggle room in the budget to purchase one.

I don't reconstitute them before using.  I simply throw them into the dish I'm making and the liquid in the dish is usually enough to plump them back up.  If I need to use them in something drier, I can always put a handful in a tablespoon of water and let them sit for 5-10 minutes.

You might also be interested in these related products;

Weston Food Dehydrator
Disposable Food Preparation Gloves
Weston 10-Tray Food Dehydrator
Nesco Snackmaster Pro Food Dehydrator