Photo By: Tom Myrick -2018-

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Almost every vegetable garden has them – hot peppers. So, what to with these fiery capsica (aka peppers)? Try freezing, roasting, blending with a sauce, pickling, canning, or drying them. Having gobs of cowhorn peppers (Capsicum annuum, Plant variety -Cowhorn Pepper) at the Veggie-Bed, we chose to dry them.

“The cowhorn is often referred to as a cayenne-like pepper or as a variety of cayenne. The cayenne, too, is sometimes called cowhorn. Sure, they share a similar tapering shape and coloring (maturing from green to a bold red), but they are related only as much as they come from the same family of chilies, annuum” (pepperscale.com) [1].

Photo By: Tom Myrick -2018-

Photo By: Tom Myrick -2018-

“There are many different ways to prepare and preserve them. One of the easiest and fastest ways to do this for future use is to dry the hot peppers with a string. In only a few minutes, you can quickly string up your peppers and then leave them to dry in a sunny window” (leaf.tv) [2]. “Drying chili peppers is a great way to store them for the long term. You don’t want to waste any of those chili peppers picked from that huge harvest this year” (chilipeppermadness.com) [3].

Using a needle and fishing line, we strung the peppers together and hung them in a window with direct sunlight. After several weeks, they started to dry.

Photo By: Tom Myrick -2018-

Upon taste testing some of the ground pepper, my mouth felt like I had eaten a lump of hot coal, sweat broke out on my forehead, my eyes teared-up, and my nose started running – leaving me running for a glass of milk!

Writer/editor: Tom Myrick