To Ed, re: peppers

[Beth]

From Ed::Since you live in Texas maybe you can help me out....I have a big box of dried Red Peppers, can you tell me how they are supposed to be used in cooking. I also have a couple of bags of small dried Red Peppers, and a bag of powdered green chiles, all this came as a gift to me with no instructions on how to use them.


My guess is that the green powdered chilies would be ground jalepeno. Use it where you would use jalepeno flavor and the green veggie presence is not needed....or just to add a little kick to anything you like.

Dried red chilies are tougher to judge without seeing them. They could be hot or sweet (I have noticed that, at least as a general rule of thumb, larger peppers tend to be milder while smaller ones tend to pack more heat). Some recipes call for whole dried peppers (usually soaked or cooked in oil or slow cooked in a stew-type dish and possibly removed before eating). Dried peppers can also be used crushed to use in a recipe or sprinkled on top of a dish (like the kind you see in pizza places), or ground into a powder. You could cut one in half, soak in a little water and test it to see how hot it is (a dip from the water would be my starting point), but you'll just have to try one to be sure what you've got.

Hope that helps.

[Ed]

Hi Beth,

Yes your information does help. I have printed it out and will try to do what you suggested. And I'll look for some recipes that call for dried peppers, or maybe I'll just use some dried peppers in recipes that call for peppers.

Thanks for your help.

Ed

[Abby]

I know you didn't ask me, but I don't think that ground green chilis are quite the same as jalapenos. I spent a lot of time in Santa Fe last year where they put green or red chili sauce on everything, almost like a salsa. The green chili that I had was much milder and sweeter than a jalapeno. In New Mexico, I think they call them Hatch green chilis, and they are much larger than a jalapeno. Any New Mexicans out there with more in depth knowledge of the green chili? Anyway, they do make a wonderful sauce for just about anything.

[Beth]

Ed, I responded to ground green chilies in the generic sense, and the ones I have seen most often are jalepenos. However, if they are labelen "ground green chilies", I would expect them to be a sweeter or milder pepper. It'll only take one taste to tell for sure!