Homemade Crushed Red Pepper

And for today’s Sunday Scratchups trick… here’s why crushed red pepper is one of the cheapest spices to buy at the store, because here’s how ridiculously easy it is to make, and peppers are ridiculously easy to grow! So I’m not the best at gardening, but every year I grow at least two different kinds of hot peppers: They’re prolific, they’re hard to wreck, and we use a lot of them.

This year it’s one cayenne plant and two jalapeño plants, and since I’ve already filled a little jar to the brim making Copycat Chili Garlic Sauce with the cayenne, I decided to turn my hand to Homemade Crushed Red Pepper.

Just eleven ripe cayenne peppers filled about 1/4 of this empty spice bottle. (Yes, I washed it out thoroughly first — but reduce, reuse, recycle, and take advantage of the built-in handy shaker top!) Why eleven? That’s how many were red on the day I picked them and did this, although I’ll be filling up the rest of the bottle with the next batch.

Homemade Crushed Red Pepper

Ingredients

Ripe red cayenne peppers

Directions

Dry your whole peppers — I did mine for 10 hours in my very cheap ALDI food dehydrator, but you could also dry them in the oven on foil lined cookie sheets at about 160 degrees for 8-10 hours.

Once your peppers are nice and dry, throw them in a food chopper or food processor. I cut mine in half to fit my little food chopper, which I then proceeded to drop on the floor and break right after making this batch of crushed red pepper.

But that’s OK, because I then replaced it with my shiny new Ninja Express Chop food chopper, which is awesome, and has double blades, and will make wicked good crushed red pepper next time. MashupDad is halfway convinced I dropped the old one one on purpose so I could get this new one, but you need to convince him I would never even think of such a thing, and you shouldn’t either, no matter how nice the new one is and how jealous you are of me now. But I digress…

So anyway, you now have your dried red peppers in your food chopper. Proceed with the chopping until you have a food chopper full of crushed red pepper. Boom: You’re done. Some of the flakes in mine are a bit large, but that will all change now that I have… The Ninja! lol

Yes, it’s that easy

Ta-da! A one-ingredient recipe. Store in your pantry; just use an empty spice bottle or other tightly covered container. (Unlike me, you can also soak the label off of yours; I was just too impatient and it was just too darn sticky, but next time.) These homemade crushed red pepper flakes were pretty spicy, but still had an underlying sweetness and freshness that doesn’t come through in the basic grocery store crushed red pepper.

Do be careful not to take a big whiff after opening the lid of your food chopper, since coughing fits from pepper fumes are no fun at all. If you’re sensitive to working with hot peppers, also wear gloves while handling, and avoid touching your face until you’ve thoroughly washed your hands.

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Homemade Crushed Red Pepper

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So easy to make your own crushed red pepper from garden peppers!

Course seasoning

Total Time 10 hours hours 15 minutes minutes

Servings 0

Author Rachel Singer

Ingredients

• Ripe red cayenne peppers

Instructions

• Dry your whole peppers -- I did mine for 10 hours in my very cheap ALDI food dehydrator, but you could also dry them in the oven on foil lined cookie sheets at about 160 degrees for 8-10 hours.
• Once your peppers are nice and dry, throw them in a food chopper or food processor, cutting in half to fit if necessary.
• Proceed with the chopping until you have a food chopper full of crushed red pepper.
• Boom: You're done.
• Store in your pantry in a tightly covered container.