Preserving

Harvest season arrives and suddenly you have more chiles than you could eat in a month. Good news: chile is one of the most rewarding foods to preserve. Here are the methods, from the simplest to the most elaborate, so you do not lose a single one and have fire all year round.

Drying: the age-old method

Drying concentrates flavour and heat, and leaves the chile ready to grind. Three ways, depending on your hurry and your climate:

• Air-drying: thread the chiles onto a string (the classic ristra) and hang them somewhere airy and dry. It only works well where humidity is low.
• In the oven: halve them and bake at a low temperature (around 60 °C) for several hours, with the door ajar so the moisture escapes.
• In a dehydrator: the most convenient and even option; in slices, until they snap when you bend them.

Once dry, grind them into your own flakes, powder or a chile salt by mixing them with coarse salt.

Freezing: the lazy shortcut

It is the easiest method of all, and there is no need to blanch: wash, dry and into the freezer, whole or chopped, in a bag or jar. They keep for about 10 months. That said, they go soft once thawed, so they are perfect for stews, sauces and sofritos, but not for eating raw.

Pickling: tang and crunch

Cover the sliced chiles with a hot vinegar brine (with some salt and, if you like, sugar) in a sterilised jar. The acid preserves them and adds that addictive tangy bite. Kept in the fridge they are ready in a day; for a pantry preserve you need water-bath canning that is properly acidified (see the safety section).

Fermenting: the base of the great sauces

Behind many legendary sauces, from sriracha to Tabasco, there is fermentation. The process is deceptively simple: chiles in a salt brine (around one tablespoon of salt per cup of water), covered and at room temperature for one or two weeks, letting the gases escape. Lactic bacteria do the work, lower the pH and create a depth of flavour impossible to achieve any other way. Then you blend it and bottle it.

If fermentation gets under your skin, it is a whole world of its own (in fact, it is exactly what our other project, FermentApp, is about).

Sauces, jams and chutneys

• Homemade sauces: cooked (fry and blend) or fermented; with vinegar as a preservative they last weeks in the fridge.
• Chile jams and preserves: here sugar does the preserving, and they are spectacular with aged cheeses.
• Chutneys: sugar, vinegar and spices simmered slowly; the sweet-and-sour duo preserves and pairs beautifully with curries and meats.

Smoking: the chipotle secret

Smoking adds a huge layer of flavour and helps preserve. The perfect example is the chipotle: nothing more than a red jalapeño, smoked and dried. Smoke the chiles at a low temperature and then dry them completely (a dehydrator is the most efficient) so they keep without moisture.

Safety: read this before you dive in

Botulism is serious business. Chiles are low-acid foods, ideal territory for the Clostridium botulinum bacterium in oxygen-free environments. Two golden rules. First: homemade chile (or garlic) oils with fresh ingredients are not kept at room temperature; use dried ingredients to infuse the oil, or keep it in the fridge and use it within a few days. Second: for jars meant to live outside the fridge, acidify with vinegar or lemon to a pH below 4.6; otherwise you need a pressure canner. When in doubt, refrigerate.

With this arsenal, a good harvest can last you until the next one. Pick your method, mix them fearlessly, and keep the fire burning.