Spicy recipes for what you grow
Every dish here starts with real peppers, fresh, fermented, dried, or drowned in vinegar, and every recipe carries a fire rating so nobody gets ambushed at dinner. Cook your way through a heavy harvest, put up pickles and ferments for winter, or add controlled heat to a weeknight plate. I test everything in my own kitchen on people with normal tolerance, so when a recipe says hot, believe it. Plants producing faster than you can eat? Start with the glut recipes. Want a win tonight? The quick pickles take twenty minutes.
Every recipe carries a fire rating. Filter by how brave you feel today.
Use up a heavy harvest
Ferments and sauces
Preserving peppers
Weeknight heat
One tested recipe every Thursday
The Heat Sheet delivers one recipe or sauce find each week, plus a growing tip and a reader moment. Free, with the grow calendar thrown in.
Questions cooks ask
What can I do with a big jalapeño harvest?
Quick pickles first, they take twenty minutes and keep for two months. Then freeze whole pods for cooking, candy a batch, and ferment the rest into sauce.
How do I make hot sauce from home grown peppers?
The easiest path is a fresh blended sauce with vinegar, ready in five minutes. The best path is a simple ferment, a week of patience that rewards you with deeper flavour.
How do you store fresh hot peppers?
On the counter for a few days, in the fridge crisper for two weeks, or in the freezer for months. Freeze them whole on a tray first so they do not clump.
How do I cook with hot peppers without making it too spicy?
Remove the seeds and the white pith, that is where most of the heat lives. Start with half a pepper, taste, and add more. You can always add heat but you cannot take it out.