What to do with Thai chilies?

Cafe Society
1

Last weekend I wanted to make my own drunken noodles, and while I was at the Asian market procuring ingredients I picked up a package of Thai chilies (also known as bird’s eye chilies or chile padi). The store did not have bulk individual chilies, so I got a 0.65 lb package. I only used 4 of them in the noodles (these are small but rather potent peppers; a little goes a long way), so I have a bunch of chilies left. So I need to figure out something to do with the rest of them.

  • “Make more Thai food” is the obvious answer, but I’m sure I’ll get tired of that long before I use up the chilies. That said, I do have a Thai-style basil chicken recipe in my rotation. That recipe uses bell peppers + some red chili flakes for heat, but I suspect that recipe was tailored to use ingredients available at a typical American grocery store. I bet using a few of these Thai chilies in places of the dried chili flakes would improve the dish.
  • Can I freeze them? I kind of doubt I can use them all up before they start spoiling if I don’t freeze them.

BTW, the noodles turned out amazing. They tasted exactly like the ones I’ve gotten from Thai restaurants, and 4 peppers was just right to give them a good medium heat level.

2

Make hot sauce. I don’t have a recipe to recommend. I’m certain you can easily find one that sounds appealing to you.

3

I’ve never made hot sauce before, but the idea of making homemade hot sauce intrigues me.

4

If you dry them, you can grind them. Note: do not dry them indoors in a dehydrator.

Bruise a few and put them in a jar of good quality cooking oil.

You should be able to wash and freeze them, then use them in soups and sauces.

5

You can eat them straight up as picante pick me up in between bites of otherwise bland food. I like to chomp on a fresh serrano in-between bites of a sandwich for example.

6

Just pickle them whole. They last forever and you just pull them out as you need them for recipes.

7

We’ve frozen the ones leftover from our garden, they work fine as an addition to a cooked dish.

8

They last a long long time. I toss snippets of them into under-powered General Tso’s Chicken or Kung Pao Chicken when we get some from local takeout, or cut up some into hot & sour soup when we make it, or add some to anemic commercial salsa, or cut some up into the vinegar concoction on the countertop, into which I toss leftover ribs and seeds of hot peppers or some ghost pepper powder or donated carolina reapers or whatever, and top off with extra vinegar as need be.

9

You can chop them finely and mix them with fish sauce, vinegar, and a little sugar to make a dipping sauce.

10

I was going to suggest making Kung Pao. The first time I had Kung Pao Chicken at a Chinese restaurant, I ordered it “mild”, as I was still getting used to hot peppers. My dish came with 16 (!) peppers in it! The waitress had insisted it wouldn’t taste hot if I just avoided eating the peppers. She was wrong. But they were so delicious, I ate many of them nonetheless and suffered through the pain. .

11

Make your own homemade chili (or chili garlic) oil/paste/sauce. There are a ton of recipes out there. Just find one that seems to match your tastes and also your storage preference (shelf stable, refrigerate, or freeze).

12

Papaya salad springs to mind. I’ve made it before, great in the summer heat. Like most salads, the effort is grocery shopping and prep with assembly quite literally tossed together. The more exotic ingredients some recipies call for like shrimp paste or pickled crabs & bruised long beans can be left out or substituted (but not fish sauce, IMO). But worth using if you can find them.

13

You can dice them up and add them to any sauce for a kick. You can pickle them and also drop them in a brine for something else you are pickling like green tomatoes or cucumbers. Diced very small they are great in scrambled eggs, if you cut them in too big pieces, they ruin the texture of the eggs. Drop a few in any soup as it’s cooking.

14

Refrigerate that! garlic in oil can get botulism so I expect peppers in oil can also.

Dry them. All you need to do is to spread them out somewhere with good air circulation; small hot peppers will generally dry nicely that way.

You can, indeed, also freeze them. They don’t need to be blanched; just stick them in a freezer bag, squeeze out the air, seal and put in the freezer.

Or, as has already been said in the thread, pickle them.

You have a high heat tolerance level.

15

All of the above plus my current obsession,

Highly addictive, especially with pho or scrambled eggs.