I have a bumper crop of hot cherry peppers and have run out of ideas on what to do with them.

Any good recipes?

I've used them in chili, salsa and other recipes that I think need a little sparking up.

This weekend I hope to find time to make a few jars of stuffed cherry peppers.

- Hollow out the seeds, stuff the cavity with a cube of feta cheese wrapped in prosciutto and jar in olive oil.

I'll also pickle a few jars and do a general canning of a few jars but I'll still have a bunch left over.

Do you have any good canning or special recipes you want to pass on?

... core them out, stuff them bacon, ham and cheese and then pickle them ... they make great party poppers...

... also - stuff them with cheese, dip in beer batter and deep-fry until golden brown ... another game favorite and you can freeze them ...

... geesh - I should have read more than the first sentence of your post ... lol

Just ask Andytv. Remember all his work with those datil peppers? I am certain he will have some good ideas!

I will core some and freeze too (should have put that in the original post).

I like the batter, stuff and deep fry idea. Cherry poppers, duh (dope slap on me).

^... not as bad as me saying to stuff & pickle them right after you posted it ... I know I'm tired ... but that's bad ...

Compared to datil peppers (on the hot scale), cherry peppers are a sweet pepper but I'm sure Andy will chime in.

I might try to smoke some and see how that turns out. Never done it but hey, you don't know until you try. Dry some? Make a hot pepper relish for a sandwich spread... It's all up for grabs.

If you freeze them, only stem them. They basically turn to mush in the freezer anyway, so about all they are good for after freezing is cooking and making your own sriracha style sauce. Seeds serve as a natural thickening agent when ground for sriracha.

Hey, halloween is comming up, you could drop them in trick-or-treaters bags...

^ Thanks for the tips. I like your thinking.

Regarding smoking peppers - Cherry peppers are decent sized, but normally they are not very fleshy. Smoking a non-fleshy pepper can be hit or miss. Usually miss with the milder ones, you tend to end up with a pepper shaped object that tastes like tar. Sweet peppers really don't hold up well under chipotle style smoking.

Again, thanks TG for the tips

My cherry peppers at this time range in (coin) size from quarter to silver dollar. I plucked the plants from what ever fruit they had because it's starting to get cold at nights here.

Maybe smoking them are not a good idea. Freezing the smaller ones for future use in some sauce and canning, stuffing the larger ones might be the way to go.

Robert,

Cherry peppers are probably not going to make a good fermented sauce. They are great pickled, or stuffed and pickled and would probably make a nice sweet sriracha, but fermented into a sauce, I don't think they have enough flavor to hold up. You're probably just going to get a bottle full of pulpy red salty vinegar.

I stuff them with a mixture of bread crumbs olive oil and anchovies.

Bucky, some more info on my experiences smoking peppers...

I've been farking around all summer trying to duplicate the wonderfull smokey pepper flavor of chipotles, but without the heat (or without most of it anyway) for those who can't handle the heat. So far, I've burned though I don't know how many peppers - anaheims, pasillias, italian sweets, red mini-bells, banana, a few more I can barely pronounce, let alone spell, etc..., many different combinations of smoking woods (chipotles, which are red jalepenos, are traditionally done with heavy pecan wood smoke) and overall, meh, no dice. Some of these are thick fleshy peppers, some are thin non-fleshy peppers. Italian Sweets with cherry & almond was the best of them and it still was a bit on the tarry side.

Now, I've had good results smoking fresno peppers, which are hotter than jalepenos, about on par with serrano peppers, but unlike serranos or jalepenos, they are not a thick fleshed pepper. Interestingly enough, they do BETTER when smoked as a green, just starting to turn red pepper, and not as good as a full red pepper. Once they turn full red, they go sweet and they just don't hold up.

Ultimately, in the sweeter peppers, I'm butting up against he higher sugar content and this higher sugar content is more apt to burn and turn to carbon. This necessitates a very low cook temprature, problem is, longer cook tempratures = greater chance of over smoking the pepper since the pepper doesn't have a strong flavor of it's own that can hold up against the smoke. Oven finishing seems to be the apparent answer, but oddly enough, it isn't. Finishing the peppers in the oven just makes them taste flat - it's like all the work you put into smoking them just evaported out the oven vent.

Now, the one thing I have not tried is a gas smoker. That might very well be the solution. Electric & natural fuel just don't work for the milder peppers.

RE dd: you had me up until the anchovies. YUCK! I might try it with something more land based. Fish = Yucky! Some other salted meat of some sort. Pork based maybe?

Hmmmm... stuff them with crumbled bacon, cream cheese, bread crumbs and a little scrabbled egg/milk (to hold the mix together) then roasted in the oven?

Re TG

"Ultimately, in the sweeter peppers, I’m butting up against he higher sugar content and this higher sugar content is more apt to burn and turn to carbon."

I wonder if you keep the heat low then the sugars might caramelize? I'm sure you thought of this already. Maybe not what you're looking for (caramelized peppers) but would probably be better than carbon.

I think I'll punt on the smoking peppers thing. I'll stay with canning, pickling, stuffing, freezing this fall.

That being said, I'm open to recipes or other input from the peanut gallery. I can never get enough input or enough recipes.

When I end up with a surplus of sweet peppers (bell peppers), I just slice them and pickle them in a 50/50 douche solution, a little salt, a clove or two of garlic, and at least one diced up hot pepper (habanero or the likes).

It's nothing to write home about, but it makes a nice snack (I'm eating some now).

Fess up Andy,

Your real name is Peter. As in Peter Piper who picked a peck of pickled peppers.

I once knew a guy whose name was "Peter Licher".

He hated his name and as soon as he turned eighteen he had his name legally changed to "******".

Groan

RE #15

That's what I was getting at with the sentence after the one you quoted. That when it comes to the sweeter peppers, have to keep a very low smoker temprature - possibly below that at which you can make smoke, which would necessitate the use of cold smoke arrangement, which would not dehydrate the peppers properly.

I'm not convinced that it can't be done, just that I haven't figured out how to yet.