Time Lapse Photo Blog of Air Dried Hatch Chilies
21 Oct
Back in early September I attended a Hatch Chili roast hosted by Melissa’s Produce and Bristol Farms in Newport Beach. What is a Hatch Chili? Read this my past article on Hatch Chilies. Although I took home mostly roasted Hatch chilies, I did take home some green Hatch Chilies to air dry. A string of chilies is called a ristra , which are hung up and allow to air dry and turn red.
Since I was a bit lazy and did not want to visit the store to purchase string, I improvised with rubber bands. Yes Ladies and Gentlemen, you can use what ever you want to create a ristra. I got creative and wrapped a rubber band around each stem, and then tied up the rubber bands with the knot on top. Voila! improvised ristra! This blog post is a time lapse photo blog of what it looks like when Hatch Chilies are air dried. It was pretty fun to watch this on a daily basis.
Day 1 – September 12th, 2012
The Hatch Chilies are still bright green, plumb and firm to the touch.
Day 3 – September 14th, 2012 – Some of the chilies are starting to get a little wrinkled.
Day 5 – September 16th, 2012 – Some of the chilies are starting to show hints of red.
Day 8 – September 19th, 2012 – Even more of the chilies are starting to turn red. A couple are starting to look like middle age women in Texas.
Day 12 – September 23, 2012 – Some of the chilies are fully red and the others are starting to turn. Wrinkling is really starting to take hold of the red chilies.
Day 13 – September 24th, 2012 – Not much of a difference from the day before, but I rotated the chilies a little to see the color.
Day 14 – September 25th, 2012 – Things are starting to get dehydrated
Day 15 – September 26th, 2012 – Almost all the chilies are red.
Day 17 – September 28th, 2012 – All the chilies are loosing their plumpness.
Day 21 – October 2nd, 2012 – Chilies are starting to get firm and wrikled
Day 26 – October 7th, 2012 – The stems are turning brown and the flesh is starting to curl
Day 27 – October 8th, 2012 – Not too much of a change
Day 32 – October 13th, 2012 – I was in Las Vegas for the past couple days, between leaving the window closed and a heat wave, the chilies really got dehydrated and hard to the touch
Day 34 – October 15th, 2012 – Things are progressing nicely…
Day 36 – October 17th, 2012 – The Chilies are taking a deeper red and are shrinking in size
Day 38 – October 18th, 2012 – The chilies are now very light and crispy.
This is what dried out Hatch Chilies look like cut open
I typically shred the dried out Hatch chilies and separate the dry skin and seeds. I always store them separately so that I can control flavor and heat in recipes.
Tom Holmberg
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That’s so cool Tom!! Thanks for sharing man!
Thanks Nick and Thanks for the shout out at PMA
Tom, this is fantastic! So cool to the the color change with your pictures. (Great to meet you today at PMA!)
Thanks Valentina! It was fun to watch them turn red. Great meeting you as well at PMA!