Last Thursday I received an email from Kim, she used to work at Fatted Calf and now works for Stonehouse Olive Oil Company. It was an innocent little email, the subject header only read, “have you seen this?” The body contained an url to an article. SOUTH TO NORTH, Smoking chipotles can become a great habit, written by Jacqueline Higuera McMahan. I read through the article a few times, I love the little smoky beasts. It seemed innocent enough, but I knew better. It isn’t easy maintaining a low temperature fire (under 200 degrees) for long periods of time. I wasn’t interested at first, but after doing a little research I decided to go for it, immediately.

After reading Jacqueline’s article then a few others I realized that using an electric element for heat was the way to go. Since I had a dual burner electric hotplate I was set. One for heat and one to place a cast iron skillet on filled with raw wood for smoky goodness. I needed some fruit wood though, so off I went to Pastime Hardware for supplies. And brother, uh sister, supplies are what I came away with. A wireless temperature probe (I will review the piece of shit later this week), apple wood shavings and a useless cast iron smoking wood box with lid (came painted, I’ll deal with it when I have time). I was set.
Other articles mentioned something about a dehydrator being used. This made sense to me since I couldn’t see a low temperature fire (150 degrees F) completely drying out chiles in 12 hours. I was sure I could find one.
At this point I believe I had what I needed. I had some extra time, so I decided to do some more reading on the Internet. I came across Dave DeWitt and Chuck Evan’s article, How To Smoke Chiles. I liked this article a lot, except for one point. A large evil buck toothed point. They wanted a clean smoker, something that hadn’t been used for meat. I don’t have that. And if I came home with ANOTHER ‘something’ for outdoor cooking my wife would blow a gasket. This means something because so far she’s been okay with everything, so far. But this would surely be the end.
I was dismayed and laid it down in an email to Kim. It was over.
Kim wasn’t convinced having smoked chiles with meaty flavor being bad. Especially my smoker, only well seasoned hardwoods used. It was ON, she was right. Jeez, Senior Biggles, quit yer whinin’. Saturday morning found me at the Fatted Calf stall buying some pancetta and stuffed quail. I was also seen skulking among the fresh red chiles, picking out the Ahaheims. Oh the shiny little happies.
At 6pm that Saturday late afternoon I had done the following:
Burned off the smoker’s grills.
Cleaned the smoker, no scrubbed. Just the bulky bits.
Lined bottom with freezer thick aluminum foil.
Layed down the 2 burner hotplate.
Lined smoker racks with clean foil and poked holes in it for smoke flow.
Filled cast iron pan with water soaked apple wood shavings and hickory.
Washed/dried chiles, then one slit from head to toe.
Lay down the chiles on the foil in a single layer.
I had room for a few sliced red onions too.
Mounted temperature probe with the chiles, turned on.
Dug out A portable convection oven, made clean.
The amount of contrasting information regarding how all this works is amazing. Some people just pile on the chiles and just move them around every few hours. This wouldn’t work well, they get mooshy. Some people cut off the stems and pull the seeds along with the veins. Surely this would help with smoke introduction and drying time. For me, I wanted a product that looked like the stuff I buy from Tierra Vegetables, pretty little red dudes WITH the stem on and not all flayed raw.
Again, it was 6pm when I … TURNED IT ON !!! I figured medium high for the wood chips and medium low for the other burner. Heat on one side near air inlet and chiles were on the upper opposite end near the smoker’s exhaust.
I know this all sounds easy and straight forward, but I had been reading and preparing for this over 3 days. Just how the heat source should be pointed, would the cord on the hotplate melt, slit or not to slit. Would 7 hours of smoking be okay, then dehydrate. Some people smoked for 48 hours, should I? My brain was doing triple time during those days. Long days. And now, I was in for a long long night.
I got the temperature setting on the hotplate fine, a few fine attunements. I had to replenish the wood every 2.5 hours all night long. The smoker maintained a semi-near constant temperature of 150 degrees F. Sometimes a bit lower, then as the wood went away the temperature would rise to maybe 180.

This is what I woke up to about 7am after stoking it 2 hours previous. The house was permeated with smoke, the yard all the way around was permeated. Surely the neighbors had smelled it for the last 13 hours, solid. My throat was sore from tending to the chiles. I took a shower and changed my clothes, didn’t matter. In a few more hours I was completely smoky. The sofa was smoky and so was my pillow I got to use for 4 hours. My red beard was smoky.

The chiles were smoky. (yay!)

See? This was about 14 hours in or so. I thought they needed more, so I kept the beast running for another 6 hours. What the hell eh? I’d already spent 20 some odd bucks on smoking wood for maybe 6 dollars of chiles. I was tired, real tired. Wored thin. But I hadn’t screwed anything up, yet. I knew it was a lot of work for a handful of product, but this was the first run. To see how things go.

Okay after maybe 20 hours of smoking it was time for the dehydrator. As you can see they still had PLENTY of moisture left and didn’t look ALL THAT smoked. But I was done. They surely had to be done. It was time for this to be over.

Here we see the lot being put in to a convection oven. I set this to 150 degrees F and went in for a nap. The first few came out at the 8 hour mark. Some stubborn ones held out for another 4 hours of dehydration, the last 2 hours of that I kicked it up to 180 degrees F. That was a good choice too, they pulled in nicely. I think if I were to do that again, I would bump up all the temps to 180 or so. 150 is just too darned low for me.

This product looks correct and tastes absolutely delightful. The chiles were perfectly fused with the smoky wood goodness and retained a very rich chile flavor. That combined with a supple texture gives us what we need. I noticed one article wanted the chiles to crumble to dust when touched, WRONG. Supple leather is what we’re looking for.
I consider this trip a success and I won’t be doing it again any time soon. Just dial up Tierra Vegetables and have them send you a bunch. This is rediculous.
Xo Xo