Homemade Chipotle Peppers

This year in the garden we had a ton - possibly quite literally - of jalapeños. More jalapeños than any two people could possibly eat.

At a recent family gathering, my brother suggested that I/we turn them into chipotles. I thought "What a fantastic idea!" Research resulted in finding a few things:

1. It's supposed to work best with fresh jalapenos. Being that it's November, all I had was frozen. We decided to make due.
2. You can smoke the whole pod, but most sites recommend slicing them in half and removing the stems. Removing the seeds is optional. We left them in.
3. You can use a variety of types of wood, from oak to mesquite to apple. My brother chose hickory.
4. You can either dehydrate them completely on the smoker or you can finish the process in the oven. We chose the latter because feeding the smoker with appropriate fuel gets expensive and time consuming (about 24 hours).
   

So I prepped the peppers, dropped them off with said brother, he smoked them and returned them last Friday, and I threw them in the oven to complete the dehydration (have I mentioned I love my convection oven? Yeeeeeeeeesss, my precious).

The result? About 100 chipotle peppers, ready for use.