Chilli Oils

I have a couple of chilli plants at home, in the summer I get a bounty of red chillies and a few habaneros. Habaneros are very hot, I can only use a little in my cooking without blowing my head off, so I’ve started making chilli oil and drying them out to make chilli flakes so as not to waste these beautiful foods. The red chilli plant produces ALOT, I’m able to cook with those but unless I eat chilli every day they can easily go to waste.

Here are two chilli oils which you can make at home to dress salads, cook with or top soups/hummus and much more.

Makes 250ml bottle / 30 mins + cooling

Red chilli, garlic and bay leaf oil
Ingredients

• 4 red chillis

• 3 bay leaves

• 4 cloves of garlic

• 1tbsp whole black peppercorns

• 1tbsp dried chilli flakes

• 250ml high-quality extra virgin olive oil

Habanero and lime oil
Ingredients

• 2 Habanero chillis

• Peel of 1 lime

• 1tbsp coriander seeds

• 250ml high-quality extra virgin olive oil

Chilli, garlic and lemon oil
Ingredients

• 4 red chillis

• 4 cloves of garlic

• 1 tbsp black peppercorns

• 1 tbsp dried chilli flakes

• Zest of 1 lemon

• 250ml high-quality extra virgin olive oil

For both recipes, keep the stem of the chilli on and slice the chilli lengthways to the end, like in the photos below.

Now pour the oil into a saucepan and add the other ingredients. Turn the heat up enough that the oil has tiny bubbles BUT doesn’t burn the chilli and ingredients. Check the video below to see how it looks. Keep the oil slowly bubbling away for around 15 minutes. Allow it to cook and pour it into a bottle. You can keep these oils for 2 months and kept in room temperature.