I did it! I made my own ground chipotle powder for my spice rack! It was time-consuming! But educational!
Okay, first you have to have a source of red ripe jalapeños.
If you can't buy them, you'll have to grow them. Or get given them by someone else who grew them if you're lucky.
Then you have to have either a smoker or a charcoal grill. I had a charcoal grill. Theoretically. Meaning when I went to move it out from where it's stored I found that the bottom was rusting out and the legs were falling off. But! I thought I could make it work one last time...
So I covered the bottom with slings of heavy-duty aluminum foil, made sure the legs were propped optimally, and doused the ground underneath with several buckets of water. We've had sufficient rain that all but the top inch of soil/woodchips are still very wet. I kept a bucket full of water nearby just in case.
Used the charcoal chimney to start about a dozen briquettes—just enough to support about a handful of cherry wood chips that had been soaking in water overnight. Waited until the briquettes were ashy grey and dumped them onto the bottom grate near the front.
And arranged the jalapeños on the highest cooking grate opposite the briquettes—you want them to smoke, not cook. Or at least as much as possible.
Handful of wet cherry wood chips on top of the briquettes. Wait until they begin to smoke, then close the lid.
The top vent is only open a sliver because with the foil slings the lid doesn't fit very well anyway. If you have an actual intact grill then you'll probably want to open it a bit more.
Then go do garden tasks or whatever that keep you in range of the grill so you can monitor for smoke and be sure nothing is on fire (or your janky grill collapses). In roughly 20-30 minutes, when you can't see smoke anymore, you're going to open the lid and throw another handful of soaked cherry wood chips onto the briquettes. Repeat until the desired amount of smoking has occurred. You may need to add a few more briquettes midway through. The source I looked this method up on recommended smoking for 3 hours, so that's what I did. I think it would have been fine after 2 hours though.
You can see a few of the ones closest to the heat got a bit charred after 3 hours, but that's fine. I then transferred them to my dehydrator and let it run overnight to turn them crispy instead of leathery.
My house smelled fantastic. Smoky and sweet and spicy—like barbecue sauce without the sticky.
I then removed the stems/caps (next time I'll do this before smoking...just twist them off without breaking open the pepper) and the seeds because I'm a spice-weenie.
The chickens loved the seeds. Then I ran the smoked, dried ripe jalapeños through a spice grinder. Which, since mine is old and sucks, means I also passed the results through a wire mesh strainer.
And here's the result! A bit more than half a cup of ground chipotle powder (here in a recycled minced garlic jar). This should last me quite a while (spice-weenie).
I waited until everything was cold then threw the aluminum slings in the garbage and put the grill out for the metal scrappers. Going to have to get a new grill to do this again. I want to try making smoked paprika next.
