Chilli plants have a habit of testing a gardener’s confidence.
For months, you watch them carefully.
You sow the seeds early, keep the seedlings warm, move them into larger pots and wait patiently for flowers. Eventually, the first tiny green chilli appears and is treated as a considerable horticultural achievement.
Then September arrives and the plant produces thirty-seven of them at once.
Suddenly the question isn’t how to grow chillies.
It’s what on earth to do with them all.
Fortunately, chillies are particularly good candidates for preserving. They can be frozen, dried or pickled, allowing you to enjoy the harvest long after the plants themselves have finished cropping.
And because a little chilli often goes a very long way, one productive plant can keep the kitchen supplied for months.
Here’s how to make the most of your chilli harvest without allowing half of it to wrinkle sadly at the back of the fridge.
When should you pick chillies?
You don’t necessarily need to wait until every chilli has turned red.
Many chillies can be harvested while green or left on the plant to mature into yellow, orange, red or another ripe colour, depending on the cultivar.
The flavour changes as they mature, and fully ripened chillies can develop greater sweetness and richness alongside their heat.
Picking some fruits while they’re still green can also encourage the plant to continue producing.
Towards the end of the growing season, however, it becomes a race against falling temperatures.
Chilli plants are tender and dislike cold conditions, so harvest remaining fruits before they are damaged by frost.
If you’re growing them in containers, you may be able to move plants somewhere warmer and protected to extend the season.
Otherwise, pick the crop.
You have preserving to do.
Wear gloves when handling very hot chillies
Before we begin, a practical word about chilli heat.
The compounds responsible for a chilli’s heat can remain on your skin after chopping, particularly when you’re handling very hot varieties.
Wearing disposable or washable food-safe gloves is sensible when preparing large quantities or particularly fiery chillies.
Avoid touching your eyes and face while working.
And wash your hands, knife and chopping board thoroughly afterwards.
This may sound excessively cautious until you’ve rubbed an eye after chopping a hot chilli.
At which point it will sound like excellent advice.
How to freeze chillies
Freezing is probably the easiest way to preserve a large chilli harvest.
There’s very little preparation involved, and frozen chillies remain wonderfully convenient for cooking.
Wash the chillies and dry them thoroughly.
You can freeze them whole, which is useful if you tend to use one chilli at a time, or slice them before freezing if you’d rather have something ready to add straight to a pan.
Remove the stalks if you wish.
For chopped chillies, spread the pieces over a tray so they aren’t touching and freeze until firm. Transfer them to a labelled freezer container or bag afterwards.
Freezing them separately first prevents the pieces forming one large chilli iceberg.
Which is useful unless your recipes routinely begin:
“Add approximately 400g frozen chilli.”
Do frozen chillies need defrosting?
Usually, no.
For cooked dishes, chopped frozen chilli can often go straight into the pan.
Add it to curries, soups, stews, sauces, stir-fries and chilli con carne just as you would fresh chilli.
Whole frozen chillies can also be chopped while still partly frozen.
The texture will soften after freezing, so they won’t have quite the same crispness as fresh chillies.
For cooking, this rarely matters.
Once they’re simmering in a curry, nobody is going to conduct a texture audit.
Freeze chillies in useful portions
If you usually cook with chopped chilli, prepare it before freezing.
You can freeze small quantities individually or portion chopped chilli into ice-cube trays with a little water, then transfer the frozen portions to a container once solid.
Another useful approach is to combine chopped chilli with ingredients you regularly cook alongside it, such as ginger.
Keep things simple and label everything clearly.
The freezer is remarkably good at turning carefully prepared ingredients into unidentified blocks.
Write down the chilli variety too if you know it.
There is quite a difference between accidentally adding two cubes of a mild chilli and two cubes of something grown specifically because the seed catalogue described it as “extremely hot”.
How to dry chillies
Drying is one of the most traditional and attractive ways to preserve chillies.
Remove enough moisture and the fruits can be stored for later use without taking up valuable freezer space.
The RHS suggests threading chillies with a needle and thread and hanging them somewhere with good airflow.
It’s simple, practical and looks rather lovely.
Choose sound, undamaged chillies for drying.
Avoid fruits showing soft patches, mould or decay.
Thread them carefully so air can circulate around each chilli rather than packing them tightly together.
Hang them somewhere dry and well ventilated.
The aim is steady drying, not allowing them to sit somewhere damp and slowly become mouldy.
Once completely dry, they should feel brittle rather than leathery or moist.
Can you dry chillies in the oven?
Yes.
An oven can be useful when the weather or your home isn’t suitable for air-drying.
Cut larger chillies in half so moisture can escape more easily and arrange them in a single layer on a baking tray.
Use your oven’s lowest suitable temperature and allow the chillies to dry slowly, turning or checking them regularly.
Keep the oven ventilated according to the manufacturer’s guidance.
The exact drying time will depend on the chilli, its size, moisture content and your oven.
You’re looking for chillies that are fully dry and brittle, with no remaining pockets of moisture.
A food dehydrator is another useful option and gives more precise control if you preserve a lot of home-grown produce.
One warning: heating very hot chillies can release irritating compounds into the air.
Keep the kitchen well ventilated and take particular care with exceptionally hot varieties.
Your chilli harvest does not need to become an indoor weather event.
Make your own dried chilli flakes
Once chillies are completely dry, they can be turned into homemade chilli flakes.
Remove the stalks and crumble or pulse the dried chillies to the texture you prefer.
You can leave some seeds in the mixture or remove them, depending on the chilli and the result you’re after.
Store the finished flakes in a clean, dry, airtight container somewhere cool and dark.
And label them.
Especially if you’ve grown several varieties.
A jar marked simply “chilli” leaves far too much room for adventure.
Make chilli powder
For a finer seasoning, grind completely dried chillies into powder using a suitable spice grinder.
Allow any airborne powder to settle before opening the grinder and take care not to breathe it in.
Very hot chilli powder is exceptionally good at finding eyes, noses and other places where it has not been invited.
Store your powder in an airtight container away from heat, light and moisture.
Then use it sparingly until you’ve established just how powerful your particular harvest is.
Home-grown chilli powder does not come with a standardised dial on the side.
How to pickle chillies
Pickling gives you something quite different from freezing or drying.
Instead of simply preserving the original chilli, you create a sharp, punchy condiment that can transform sandwiches, burgers, wraps, tacos, salads, curries and rice dishes.
The acid in vinegar is an important part of safe pickling, so this is one area where improvisation should have limits.
If you’re making preserves intended for longer storage, use a properly tested recipe from a reputable food-preserving source and follow its vinegar strength, ingredient quantities, jar preparation and storage instructions exactly.
Don’t simply reduce the vinegar because you prefer things less sharp.
Preserving recipes are chemistry as well as cookery.
For a quick refrigerator pickle, however, you can make a small quantity specifically for chilled storage and eat it promptly.
Easy refrigerator-pickled chillies
For a simple batch intended to be kept in the fridge, slice a handful of fresh chillies into rings and place them in a thoroughly clean container.
Make a hot pickling liquor using vinegar with a little salt and sugar for flavour, following a reputable refrigerator-pickle recipe for the correct proportions.
You can add flavourings such as mustard seeds, coriander seeds or peppercorns if the recipe allows.
Pour the hot pickling liquor over the chillies as directed, allow them to cool and refrigerate.
These are refrigerator pickles, not a shelf-stable bottled preserve.
That distinction matters.
Use a tested preserving recipe if you want jars designed for longer-term cupboard storage.
Be cautious with chillies preserved in oil
Chillies in oil look beautiful.
They can also present a food-safety risk when made incorrectly at home.
Low-acid vegetables stored in an oxygen-poor environment such as oil can create conditions associated with the growth of Clostridium botulinum, the bacterium responsible for botulism.
For that reason, don’t simply put fresh chillies into a bottle of oil and leave it in the cupboard.
Home preserving is not a good place for guesswork.
If you want chilli-flavoured oil, follow current food-safety guidance and a tested recipe from a reputable source rather than improvising.
The same caution applies to homemade garlic and herb oils.
A pretty bottle is not evidence of a safe preserve.
How to keep fresh chillies before preserving them
Perhaps you’ve harvested the chillies but don’t have time to deal with them immediately.
Keep fresh chillies refrigerated and use or preserve them while they’re still in good condition.
Don’t wash them until you’re ready to use them unless you can dry them thoroughly afterwards, as excess surface moisture can encourage deterioration.
Check stored chillies regularly.
Remove any that develop soft patches, mould or signs of decay before they affect neighbouring fruits.
The original advice sometimes given about storing chillies in a paper bag with an apple or banana isn’t particularly helpful here.
Apples and bananas release ethylene, a plant hormone involved in ripening, so placing them together isn’t a reliable trick for keeping chillies fresh for longer.
Give the banana its own accommodation.
What can you do with green chillies at the end of the season?
An autumn harvest often includes a mixture of beautifully ripe chillies and stubborn green ones.
Green chillies aren’t a failed crop.
They’re perfectly useful in their own right.
Use them fresh in curries, sauces, chutneys and salsas, or preserve them by freezing or pickling.
Some harvested chillies may continue changing colour after picking, although the flavour won’t necessarily develop in exactly the same way as fruit ripened fully on the plant.
The important thing is not to leave a good crop outside until cold weather ruins it simply because you’re waiting for every fruit to turn red.
Sometimes gardening involves knowing when to stop waiting.
Save some chilli seeds
If you’ve grown a chilli you particularly enjoyed, you may be tempted to save seed for next year.
You can – with a few qualifications.
Seed saved from an open-pollinated cultivar may produce similar plants, although chillies can cross-pollinate with other compatible peppers growing nearby.
Seeds collected from F1 hybrid plants are less likely to produce offspring identical to the parent.
So seed-saving can occasionally produce surprises.
For some gardeners, that’s part of the fun.
For anyone attempting to recreate the perfect chilli from last summer, it can be slightly more complicated.
Can you overwinter chilli plants?
Your chillies may not be the only thing worth preserving.
Chilli plants are perennial in suitable climates, even though they’re often grown as annual crops in Britain.
The RHS advises that plants can be overwintered somewhere warm and bright, such as a suitable indoor windowsill or conservatory.
They can be cut back to a manageable size and watered sparingly through the colder months.
Success varies according to the plant and conditions, but if you have a favourite chilli, it can be worth trying.
Get it through winter and you’ll have a head start the following year.
After nurturing it for an entire season, you may also find you’re emotionally incapable of putting it on the compost heap.
This is perfectly normal gardener behaviour.
Which chilli-preserving method is best?
That depends on how you cook.
Freeze chillies if you want the easiest possible method and regularly add chilli to cooked dishes.
Dry chillies if you want something that takes up little space and can be used whole, as flakes or ground into powder.
Pickle chillies if you enjoy something sharp and spicy alongside meals.
And if the harvest is large enough, do all three.
A freezer bag of chopped chillies is useful.
A string of dried chillies is beautiful.
A jar of pickled chillies is dangerous mainly because you’ll start putting them on everything.
Make the harvest last
There is something particularly satisfying about cooking with your own chillies in the middle of winter.
The plants may be dormant or long gone. Outside, the garden may be wet, dark and showing very little enthusiasm.
Then you open the freezer or reach for a jar of dried chilli flakes and there is a little piece of last summer’s harvest waiting.
That’s one of the pleasures of preserving home-grown food.
It extends the season.
It reduces waste.
And it means that when every chilli on the plant inevitably ripens at approximately the same moment, there is no need to panic.
Freeze some.
Dry some.
Pickle some.
Just remember to label the really hot ones.
Some surprises are better left in the garden.
Further Reading: My Garden Journal & Notes
