Monica Gross, a volunteer with the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources Online Delivery Program in Los Angeles County, described on April 11 her experiment comparing three ways to further dehydrate adobo peppers for homemade chili powder.
Dehydration remains an important food preservation method. Gross said she was unable to find adobo chili powder at local markets and decided to create her own by drying whole adobo peppers until they reached a brittle or bone-dry state suitable for grinding into powder.
Gross tested three dehydration techniques: using an oven at its lowest setting (200°F), a dehydrator, and holding the pepper over an open flame. She reported that the oven method took seven hours for the peppers to become brittle dry, while the dehydrator required nine hours. The open flame technique produced a brittle dry pepper in about 90 seconds but required careful handling as the pepper could catch fire. All methods resulted in usable chili powder for her Super Bowl Sunday recipe, but she found the open flame approach both fastest and most enjoyable.
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Gross concluded that all three dehydration methods were effective but said she would choose drying over an open flame next time due to speed and resource efficiency.
