Did you know that chipotles are smoked red jalapeños? And that paprika is smoked pimentos (we’ll be circling back to that later this summer)? I know, it blew my mind.

Last summer my brother brought us a huge bag full of jalapeños from his farm, and since we had just bought a smoker we finally had the opportunity to make our own chipotles (these are the things we dreamed about all those years in city apartments).

It was insanely easy. As easy as 1) take red jalapeños 2) put in smoker 3) wait 4) dry completely 5) enjoy. Seriously. Do that. Get red jalapeños. Smoke them. Grind them. Have chipotles! We used them all winter whole in soups and stews and ground on, well, pretty much everything. They hit the spot, and we’ll definitely be smoking another batch this summer.

Chipotles

Fresh red jalapeños

Smoker/oven

It can take up to 48 hours for chipotles to dry through, so our approach was to smoke them for 10 hours on hickory smoke and then to finish them in the oven on very low (150F) for an additional 24 hours. We dried them until they were dry to the touch and the seeds inside rattled around.