Preserving Chillies

There are many ways to preserve your chillies once they are ready to be picked, some of those methods are thousands of years old but still remain popular.

This page is for you to decide how you want to save your chillies, whether its for future cooking, pickling chillies, drying chillies or looking to make your first chilli sauce (for this we have a basic recipe here for you to try)

So you're ready to pick your first chillies?  Here's a few ways to save or preserve them.

Freezer

Chillies are easy to store - you could simply pick them, put them in a freezer bag or ziplock bag, and pop them in your freezer.  Some say you can keep them there safely for 2 or even 3 years. 

You can also freeze store bought chillies in the. same way.

We've found that, as your hobby grows, you might run out of space quite quickly so..

Another option is to mash or blend them and put them in ice cube trays to use in soups, stews, chilli-con-carne, curries etc almost like you would a stock cube - this is a great way to always have. spicy flavour bomb to hand.

Tip: Don't add any other ingredients to your chillies before freezing such as salt, herbs etc, as you want your dishes to contain the flavour profile, not your chillies.

Very Important Tip (VIT): Make sure you label everything - it's hard to console someone who thought they were eating a korma, only to find it's packed with superhot chillies :)