How to Smoke Your Own Chipotle Peppers

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A chipotle pepper is a jalapeno that has been smoked, a food preservation method as old as agriculture itself. With a bumper crop of jalapenos, pimentos and roasting peppers in need of attention, I smoked two batches of peppers in my biochar trench, with wonderful results. Here’s my report.

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Last fall, I dug a 1.5-by-8 foot trench in an area that had been overrun with perennial weeds. During the winter, I partially burned two small mountains of brambles and other hard-to-compost woody materials. This summer, I grew a successful crop of winter squash in the refilled trench, and reopened it for my pepper smoking project in mid-September. Some folks disapprove of all open burning, but I think most rural homesteads need a safe place to burn stuff from time to time. At our house, we’re experimenting with filling this need with a thoughtfully managed and monitored biochar trench. The terra preta soils of the Amazon, upon which the concept of biochar is based, were created over many centuries of successive smoulderings, so I am curious as to the long-term effects of fire in the hole.

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