How To Dehydrate Bell Peppers
Embrace the vibrant flavors of dehydrated bell peppers in your pantry Packed with nutrients and bursting with color, these preserved gems add a delightful twist to your dishes. From adding a pop of crunch to your salads and stir-fries, to enhancing the taste of soups and stews, dehydrated bell peppers are versatile and convenient.
Ingredients
- 1 lb bell peppers
Instructions
Prepare Peppers:
- Wash your peppers well in cool water. Allow them to air dry, or dry with a soft, clean kitchen towel. Excess moisture left on the peppers means more work for your food dehydrator!
- Slice off the stem of your peppers and remove the membrane and seeds from each pepper.
- Decide how you'd like them prepared:Rings - Slice peppers in 1/4 - 3/8" ringsStrips - Slice pepper in half, then cut into 1/4" strips.Diced - Slice peppers into strips, then dice to desired size.Halves - Slice peppers in halves.The larger to pieces, the longer the drying time.
Dehydrate Peppers:
- Spread prepared pepper pieces on dehydrator trays, it's important to keep it in a single layer, again, to improve drying time, efficiency, and consistency.
- Dehydrate peppers at 125f until completely dry. Test for doneness by removing a few pieces and allowing them to cool to room temperature, then bend them. Fully dried peppers will snap, peppers that aren't quite done will bend.
Store + Condition:
- Once the pepper pieces are completely dried, allow the racks to cool in the dehydrator for 30-45 minutes before transferring to long term storage containers. This allows the heat to dissipate and reduces the chances of condensation forming in your storage container.
- Once the dried pepper pieces are in storage containers, shake the jar each day or so for a week and observe the container for signs of moisture. If there are no signs of moisture, you're good to go, place them in a cool dark place for long-term storage! If there is evidence of moisture in the container, you must add the celery back to the dehydrator and dry it longer. After they've been dried the second time, you'll need to go through the conditioning process again.
Notes
Batch:
There is no limit to how many peppers you can dehydrate using this method, aside from your available dehydrator space!Storage:
Dehydrated peppers, when properly stored in an airtight container, preferably glass jar, in a climate controlled location will maintain their quality for at least 12 months. Aim to keep yours in a cool, dark location, away from light that can degrade the quality during long term storage. I personally like to store dehydrated sweet peppers in jars and vacuum seal them in my Avid Armor USV32 chamber vacuum sealer! It works amazing for removing the air from mason jars, giving my dehydrated goods a longer shelf life. From there, they go into our storage room in the basement, where they are protected from sunlight, heat, and temperature swings.how to rehydrate peppers
Add an equal amount of dehydrated pepper and water - by volume - and allow to soak. The dried pieces can be reconstituted using hot water or cold water, hot water will begin cooking the peppers while cool water will take longer to rehydrate. Avoid soaking for longer than 2 hours - it can get a little gross! If you're adding dehydrated bell peppers to soups and stews, just toss them into the boiling pot. The soup will do all the work for you!converting fresh to dried
Dehydrating removes around 95% of the moisture in the peppers so the weight drops drastically, the pepper pieces themselves will also shrink in size. The conversion from fresh to dried is going to be different for each way you prepare your peppers. I usually find that 3 tablespoons dried diced peppers = 1 cup fresh diced peppers. My favorite way to determine the conversion is to fill the top rack of my dehydrator with 2 cups of prepared peppers, and then measure the resulting volume after dehydrating and divide by 2. Then I write the conversion for that batch on a strip of painters tape and stick it to the side of my jar.