I needed to preserve some more chillies so decided to try both hot and cold smoking. I used my gas smoker for the hot smoking and then attached a cold smoke generator for the cold smoking. I found the hot smoking difficult as the temperature kept rising higher than I wanted and at the end I had some chillies that were burnt. The process for the hot smoked chillies took about 3 hours or so. The cold smoked chillies were done for about 12 hours and the flavour was much more smokey yet they were still not dried enough so I had to then put them into my dehydrator for about 3 hours at the end of the process as all moisture must be removed. The hotness of both chillies remained the same as fresh pods (the capsaicin oil remains, just the water content is removed).
This is a great way to store chillies over winter and they can easily be rehydrated or added directly to a meal suck as chilli con carne or a nice curry.
