Jalapeño Business

What does a nosy pepper do?  

Gets jalapeño business.

One not-so-great thing about having a garden can be overproduction of a certain crop.  Depending on the year and conditions, you can have a surplus of just about anything.  To this point, I've only tried to grow enough produce for two people.  I don't want to get into canning and preserving, because that's more time and energy than I am willing to give/have at this point in my life.  Heck, readers, I can barely find time to blog as of late.

Anyway, back to the point of this post.  Jalapeños and peppers in general are one of the things that I love having in excess.  Notably, because they freeze well.  I take my extra peppers, like so:

Simply place them in a freezer bag and stick them right into the freezer.  I like to make salsa year round, and I've found that you can throw a frozen pepper right into your food processor straight from the freezer. No cutting of the stem required!  The last few years it has worked out that I am running out of peppers by the time the next planting season is rolling around.  That's pretty perfect for me.

Food note: I usually like to roast my peppers on a fall day, when I can have the windows wide open.  You can blacken them on a cast-iron skillet (or comal like I do), or under the broiler for a few minutes.  (Watch carefully if you choose this method, as they will quickly become burned if you turn away.)

Once the skin is charred, wrap them in a paper towel and put in a plastic baggy and let sit.  When cooled, you'll rub the blackened skin right off and stick in bags to freeze.  The added flavor is amazing, but be warned... Your house will be a little spicy-smelling and smoky; Thus the reason I prefer to do it with the windows wide open. =)