Grow or buy?<\/strong> All of these are easy to find as seeds or starts, and most take about 70 to 90 days from transplant to harvest, plus a few more weeks to ripen fully red. If you\u2019re not growing your own, look for them at a farmers market in late summer and fall, when they\u2019re at their best.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wait until the peppers are fully red on the plant. The color in the jar is only as deep as the color in the field.<\/p>\n\n\n\n My first rule of smoking peppers: let them fully ripen on the plant to a nice, rich red. Red peppers survive the smoking process so much better than green. The exception is anchos, which smoke amazing while they\u2019re still green. There are really two types of peppers when it comes to drying. Thin-walled peppers like Anaheims and cayennes dry easily and take on smoke well. You can leave them whole and they\u2019ll dry perfectly. The ones I don\u2019t smoke, I string up and hang in the kitchen or in the shade. Thick-walled peppers like bells and jalape\u00f1os are different. Hang them whole and they rot from the inside before they dry, so I always cut those before smoking or drying. I smoke the peppers on my pellet smoker. I cut them in half, even the thin-walled ones, because they dry a little faster and take on smoke better. Then I lay them face up on wire trays and put them in the cold-smoke section, which runs around 100\u00b0F. They stay there about 6 hours, then finish drying in the dehydrator. If you don\u2019t have a cold smoker, you can use the main chamber at its lowest setting (around 175\u00b0F), but cut the time to 1 to 3 hours. For spices I just use generic pellets. Premium wood pellets don\u2019t add any extra flavor here, so save those for meats like pastrami and bacon. Low and slow is the goal. You want smoke flavor, not cooked peppers. And don\u2019t overdo it: too much smoke turns them bitter, with a taste and smell that\u2019s almost like tobacco. That\u2019s why I sometimes move them from the smoker to the dehydrator to finish drying. After smoking, the peppers go into the dehydrator at 105 to 125\u00b0F, with 125\u00b0F the sweet spot for peppers, until they\u2019re almost brittle. To check, pull one piece, let it cool for 15 minutes, and try to snap it. Any bend at all means moisture, and moisture means mold in the jar, so back in it goes. There\u2019s no set time: it depends on how long they spent in the smoker, so I just test a piece every once in a while. Here\u2019s the trick I\u2019ve learned over the years: don\u2019t grind the whole harvest. Whole dried peppers hold most of their flavor for years, but once they\u2019re ground, the flavor starts to fade quickly. So I only grind what I\u2019ll use in the next few months and keep the rest whole. The best tool for the job is a simple coffee grinder used only for spices. It works great, and it\u2019s cheap enough that if it wears out you just buy another. For big batches, like when I\u2019m making jars to give as gifts, I use the Vitamix. No matter how dry the peppers are, some pieces just won\u2019t grind down fine. That\u2019s fine, and it\u2019s how I get two jars from one batch. I run everything through a small sieve: the fine powder becomes the paprika, and the bigger flakes that stay behind become my pepper flakes. Store the whole dried peppers in an airtight container in a cool, dark place. Even better, vacuum pack them, or at least drop an oxygen absorber in the jar. The ground paprika goes in a small airtight jar too, and I refill it from the whole peppers every few months. I use smoked paprika in almost every spice blend I make, and I sprinkle it on just about everything. It\u2019s a huge bump in flavor with no added salt. There\u2019s a moment when I open a jar of our own smoked paprika and the whole kitchen smells like the garden and the smoker at … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":135,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/growingahomestead.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/Jar-of-homemade-smoked-paprika.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/growingahomestead.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/growingahomestead.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/growingahomestead.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/growingahomestead.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/growingahomestead.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/growingahomestead.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":150,"href":"https:\/\/growingahomestead.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129\/revisions\/150"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/growingahomestead.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/growingahomestead.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/growingahomestead.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/growingahomestead.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/growingahomestead.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/paprika-plant-911x1024.jpg\"){kind=spacer}
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nHarvest<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Smoking<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/growingahomestead.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/smoking-peppers-in-smoker-911x1024.jpg\"){kind=spacer}
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nDrying and grinding
<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/growingahomestead.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/grinding-up-smoked-paprika.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nStoring and using it
<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n<\/body>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"