I’ve never been the one to reach for the crushed red pepper shaker at a pizza joint. I have never been a fan of the stuff, really. UNTIL…my husband made some of his own with a batch of hatch peppers he smoked. Oh.My.Goodness. So incredibly delicious 

This is why today’s Make it Monday, I will be sharing how we made crushed red pepper – homemade, smoked, and with a variety of peppers (including hatch peppers). Yum. 

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I was recently enjoying a little outing at Sprouts and saw that they were putting out bags of fresh hatch peppers. I excitedly grabbed a bag. I knew exactly what I was going to do with them.

  

Consequently, the peppers in my garden have done extremely well this summer, so I had an outrageous amount of banana peppers and jalapeño peppers just waiting for someone to do something with them.

  

So, now that I had my peppers (hatch, banana and jalapeño), it was time to make my crushed red peppers.

We first gathered them into the smoker.

  
  

We smoked the peppers in our electric smoker for about 4 hours, we continued to let them sit in the smoker on a low heat for about 36 hours so they could dry out. Then we collected them up and took them inside.

 

 Next, it was time to pull off the tops and then stick the rest of the peppers into the Ninja blender.
   
 

Yes, I am wearing gloves – you don’t want to handle peppers and then, you know, burn your eyeballs off when you go to rub them…also, you don’t want to handle kids and their things after handling peppers. 

  

Then the really fun part…grinding the peppers into dust.

   

Finally, dump the contents into a jar (or two) of choice. *If not done carefully, it could lead to uncontrollable coughing fits and a sudden very clear sinus passage.*

  

This stuff is not only great for pizza, but for many other dishes as well – chicken, pork chops, sautéed vegetables, skillet-fried potatoes…it is just GOOD.

I hope you can try it!

What are you making today on this Make it Monday? Share!