I am growing a few jalapeños and chili pepper plants, and they are really producing handfuls! I was wondering if you could tell me how to make those wonderful jalapeño poppers (usually with cream cheese or some other cheese) and also some other recipes, such as how to pickle the peppers? Could you also tell me how to dry the chilies?

 Oh, you have lots of options. Jalapeño poppers make a nice snack or hors d’oeuvre, although they are not exactly in the classical repertoire. Pickling peppers is very straightforward, and drying peppers couldn’t be simpler. In fact, let’s start there. To dry peppers, cut them open, remove the seeds and ribs, and cut them into thin strips. Thread a piece of butcher’s twine through them and hang the line in a sunny, airy place. The peppers will dry, shrink, and turn leathery. Leave them on the line and use as needed.

One way to pickle peppers is to preserve them whole. Clean them, leave a bit of the stem on, and put them in a wide-neck jar. For a quarter pound of chiles, mix half a cup of sugar, 1-1/2 cups of white wine vinegar, and half-a-dozen black peppercorns in a pan over medium heat and bring to a boil. Immediately pour the hot vinegar over the peppers, almost to the top of the jar and seal well. Stored in the refrigerator, the chiles will last for a year.

If you’re just swamped with peppers, you can clean them, cut them in half, remove the seeds and ribs, and freeze them for a year.

Now, as to that recipe, we’ve come across several. This is one choice for Jalapeño Poppers; it looks a little quirky to us, but then all of them do. We hope it’s what you’re looking for.

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