Freezing Anaheim Peppers

The other night the temperature got down to 34 degrees - there was frost on the pumpkins for sure. This is at least a week or two earlier than usual around here, which has put a big halt on the garden.

Knowing it was going to get cold, I harvested the last of the hot peppers (as well as a few beans, and any tomato with the slightest amount of pink-my next post will be about what I'm doing with them), made some jalapeno jelly and did this with the rest of the anahiems and anchos:



Chopped them up, spread them out on a cookie sheet and froze them.



Then I bagged them up, labeled and stuck them in the freezer.

I use these all winter for Mexican dishes, soups and stews. What really saves the money, though, is using them in recipes that require those little cans of green chilies. One of those cans can make the price of the meal soar above my $5 goal and there are rarely coupons or sales for them.

The only difference is that these aren't roasted (though you could do that first and then freeze them- I never have that time right about now...), but I've not noticed a difference, probably because the recipes all seem to have a lot of other ingredients so that the chilies are only for flavor. And these deliver on the flavor.

So if you've got some end-of-harvest mild peppers, chop and freeze some up to use in place of those little cans and spend the money you save on something else.

This also works with jalapenos and sweet peppers, but I don't have enough of those this year to freeze (*sniff*).

So, I guess I'll be spending the money I save on sweet peppers and jalapenos.

-Jami