Kitchen Garden Forum

I picked a lot of red peppers and some chilli's yesterday my question now is how to store them so that the skins remain nice and firm like you see in the supermarkets. one I picked a couple of weeks ago the skin got all wrinkled . Thanks for any help.

Bren

Refrigerated would be my guess, as that's what the stores do..
If not, slice and freeze.

Try this for info.

http://anrcatalog.ucdavis.edu/pdf/8004.pdf

Dear Bren, i'm afraid i haven't got a answer for your question but, it is nice to see a post post from you, and it's cheered me up no end.

I'm still waiting for mine to ripen. I saved some seeds from some long pointed Italian sweet peppers last year and have eight lovely plants with over 40 large fruits on them. The only problem is that they aren't turning red.

I had a look how much they were selling for in the shop and packs of two peppers were £1.20 so when they finally ripen I will have got a bargain.
I usually chop and freeze ripe sweet peppers if I have too many ready at once and freeze chillies whole.

If you want to use the peppers as whole fruit, ie cutting in half, stuffing and baking/roasting, or for slicing raw in salads, then put them in a closed polythene bag in the fridge. If you want them for cooking in sauces and casseroles I find slicing, freezing open in a tray and then bagging up for the freezer when the slices are frozen hard ensures you can grab a handful out of the bag any time you need some. Both the thicker skinned bell peppers and the long pointy Italian ones work well in this way.
We process most of our chillies into chilli sauce which we store in jars in the fridge and just put a teaspoon of it into sauces etc as required. It saves the bother of having to worry about chopping up chillies then accidentally forgetting what you!ve been chopping and rubbing your eye (or even worse if you're a bloke, needing to spend a penny in a hurry