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Post by gyro on Feb 28, 2009 20:20:43 GMT
I froze some green chilli's last week. When I defrosted them today, in the first one all the seeds had gone brown, but the others were all perfectly fine, ie. paler.
Any reason for this, or do you reckon the seeds were brown BEFORE I froze ?
(it didn't seem to make any difference taste/heat wise, but to be fair, I scraped most of the brown seeds out anyway as the curry was for my daughter...)
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Post by Don Cuevas on Feb 28, 2009 20:25:13 GMT
I don't know the answer, but I suggest deseeding them next time, before freezing. I usally roast green chiles, peel and seed them, and make a rather thick salsa, which I then freeze.
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Post by bazfaz on Feb 28, 2009 20:33:01 GMT
We grow so many red Thai chillis that most get frozen with the seeds in. Occasionally the seeds are brownish. They don't go in that way (none picked fresh off the plants are brown) and I suspect they discolour on unfreezing.
I am hoping you'll taste some to see if they have spoiled.
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Post by bixaorellana on Feb 28, 2009 22:57:33 GMT
I doubt very seriously that they're spoiled. Chile is a plant that prefers the temperature to be above 45F/8C. Just as basil will go all black & wilty if frozen, yet remain edible, the chile is showing its distress at the totally wrong artificial climate.
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Post by gyro on Feb 28, 2009 23:07:51 GMT
I thought Chile was a country ..........
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Post by bixaorellana on Feb 28, 2009 23:10:52 GMT
Chile = hot (spicy) peppers. It can also be spelled chilie. Chili is for that spicy meat dish from the US southwest.
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Post by gyro on Feb 28, 2009 23:15:46 GMT
How do you spell the South American country ?
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Post by gyro on Feb 28, 2009 23:16:29 GMT
And, for the record, I don't mean U R Gay ....
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Post by bazfaz on Mar 1, 2009 10:39:01 GMT
I have a feeling that many years ago on Ye Olde Thorne Tree that a convention arose to avoid these wars by referring to the little devils as chillllllllis. I don't know whether the number of llllll denoted the heat factor.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 1, 2009 11:00:17 GMT
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Post by gyro on Mar 3, 2009 11:39:53 GMT
Well, a dictionary, to be fair ....
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Post by Don Cuevas on Mar 3, 2009 14:16:23 GMT
I read those MW Dictionary definitions and I consider them imprecise.
Eg, their definition of "Chili con carne". It's not ALWAYS made with ground beef.
"spiced stew of ground beef and minced chilies or chili powder usually with beans"
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Post by Deleted on Mar 3, 2009 14:41:48 GMT
Meanwhile, I am wondering: are frozen chilis infinitely better than dried chilis?
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Post by lola on Mar 3, 2009 14:59:15 GMT
Dried vs. frozen depends on how you mean to use them. In a stew or similar, they'd be fine.
The northern New Mexico red chile enchilada etc sauce is made with dried chiles, and it's delicious. The green chile doesn't seem to air dry well until it's red ripe.
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Post by bazfaz on Mar 3, 2009 15:29:44 GMT
I use chillis mainly in Thai food. Obviously in quick stirfries dried wouldn't be so good. Many recipes call for dry chillis to be soaked. This seems to me to return them to the state they would have been if I had frozen them.
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Post by bixaorellana on Mar 3, 2009 20:38:21 GMT
The dried version of a chile does not taste like the fresh version.
Many cuisines only use the chile to make the food piquant -- it's about the heat, not the specific flavor of the chile. If that's what's called for, it doesn't matter.
Mexican cooking is very specific about which chile is necessary in any given dish. The dried chiles even have different names than their fresh counterparts. I.e., A dried poblano is called a chile ancho, not a poblano seco (seco = Sp. for dried).
So, it's not really a matter of "better", but of what kind of taste you want. If you're looking to duplicate the taste of fresh chile in a dish, you're far better off using frozen chile than dried.
And soaked dried chiles don't really taste the way they did when fresh. They taste good, but different. Once you experiment with chiles in their different manifestations, you'll develop definite preferences.
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Post by gyro on Mar 4, 2009 6:25:36 GMT
Yeah, tru. I normally use dried chillis for heat in a dish as it's easier. But, frozen ones DO give more of a flavour, and based on the success of freezing, I think I'll go down that route more.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 4, 2009 7:20:25 GMT
I can buy fresh chillis for next to nothing, but the bag of them is far too big for me to use -- so I think I will start freezing smaller packages as well. I always have lots of dried chillis in stock anyway -- probably several years worth.
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Post by gyro on Mar 4, 2009 7:22:57 GMT
I normally don't buy frsh chillis as I'll never use more than a quarter of the bag before they go off. But, if I freeze them .....
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Post by bazfaz on Mar 4, 2009 8:28:14 GMT
Chillis don't freeze in a lump so it is east to take 2 or 4 out when you need them. They are small so unfreeze in a few minutes.
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Post by gyro on Mar 6, 2009 6:45:43 GMT
Funnily enough, I was actually surprised at how LONG this lot took to defrost. 3 of them, longest being probably 2 inches. More than half an hour, easily, but I guess it doesn't really matter if they're still a bit 'crunchy' when you start cooking them ... ?
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Post by Deleted on Mar 6, 2009 7:25:04 GMT
If I were cooking them, I wouldn't even wait for them to defrost.
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Post by gyro on Mar 6, 2009 7:36:09 GMT
Just a little, so you can chop them adequately, I'd say. Depends if I'm cooking for Little Miss G, in which case I need to scrape most of the seeds out...
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Post by bazfaz on Mar 6, 2009 8:18:22 GMT
Mine are the smaller Thai mouse-shit chilllllis. The kitchen work top is tiled so the coldness is rapidly lost. After 5 minutes I can chop them.
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