How to Dry Spicy Peppers

I picked these from my garden earlier this week and still have this many left.  As a result I decided to dry some more peppers.  Before I get into the how to dry peppers there are a couple of important how not toos that I learned the hard way.

• Always wear gloves when dealing with hot peppers.  Even the milder ones will stay on your hands through several washes leading to potential pain the first time your eyes itch.
• Do not set up your dehydrator in the house unless you enjoy all of your house including your bedroom smelling like hot peppers.

Now that we have that out of the way here is how you dry peppers in a dehydrator step by step.

The first step is to go through the peppers you are going to use and discard any that are squishy or have bad places on them that aren't easily removed.

Cut the stem off.  I didn't do it the first time and for applications where I want to crush up the peppers it's going to be a bit of a problem.  Plus anything that takes up unnecessary room in the dehydrator is not helping you in this process.  

Cut the pepper in half and put it on the screen.  The only time I don't cut one in half is if it is so small that I worry it might fall through the screen.  Even then it takes longer than the larger peppers that are cut in half to dry.  This takes long enough so you want to make sure that you do what you can to lower the time it takes.

Fill up your screen, but try to leave a bit of space around the peppers so that they will dry faster.

Keep going stacking the screens as your dehydrator directs.  You'll notice that I'm keeping peppers that are like each other together.  That's not because I'm worried about flavors blending or anything.  I just like to store them separately so that I can use them in different combinations for different recipes and this makes that easier.  

Put it in your dehydrator and turn on.  As I said don't do this inside.  It's hard to tell in the picture but this is outside on a screened in porch.  Then be patient.  In this dehydrator it takes about a day, though I recommend checking at multiple points to be sure.  It's done when the peppers are dried out and the thinner ones are a bit brittle.  Again be sure to wear gloves when doing this.  The dried ones aren't as bad about coming off your hands, but it's still not a good time.

As I said be patient.  After throwing away the bad peppers and cutting up 4 trays worth for the dehydrator, all of these peppers are left.