Among the essential spices for cooking in every household, dried chili is a highly used seasoning ingredient. Whether it is making sauces, braised dishes, home cooked dishes, or industrial seasoning production, it cannot be separated from it. High quality dried chili peppers have a bright red color, moderate dryness, and rich spiciness, which can greatly enhance the flavor of dishes; Dry chili peppers with insufficient moisture not only have a dull taste and a reduced spiciness, but also give rise to various problems, causing difficulties in storage, packaging, and long-distance transportation. They are also a common loss pain point for many food processing plants.
Freshly picked dried chili peppers, after natural air drying or traditional drying, may appear dry on the surface, but in reality, they often suffer from excessive moisture. Dried chili peppers have thick skin and dense folds, as well as gaps between the fruit stem, seeds, and the inner layer of the pepper flesh, which can easily hide residual moisture. This is a common phenomenon in the industry known as "dry on the outside and wet on the inside". Many manufacturers only judge the dryness based on appearance during inspection, and directly package, seal, and transport the food without realizing that the hidden excess moisture can become the biggest hidden danger of food spoilage.
In the environment of storage, stacking, and sealed transportation, residual internal moisture cannot evaporate and will continue to accumulate and regain moisture. A humid environment is just suitable for the growth of mold and bacteria, and it is also easy to attract insect eggs to hatch and breed small insects. This leads to the appearance of white skin, mold spots, clumping, and softening of dried chili peppers after storage for a short period of time. Not only does it completely lose its edible and seasoning value, but the entire batch of ingredients will also be scrapped, greatly increasing the production cost of the enterprise. Meanwhile, spoiled dried chili peppers can also produce harmful substances, posing serious food safety hazards and affecting product reputation.
The traditional drying method is limited by the principle of heat conduction, and can only gradually conduct heat inward from the dried chili skin. The drying speed is slow, and it is difficult to remove the deep moisture inside the material. To dry the inner layer of moisture, it is necessary to bake at high temperatures for a long time, which is not only inefficient, but also prone to scorching the skin and losing the natural spicy flavor. It still cannot solve the core problem of uneven dryness and wetness, and is difficult to adapt to the needs of mass production and long-distance storage and transportation.
In response to the difficulties of drying, storing, and transporting dried chili peppers, microwave processing technology has made up for the shortcomings of traditional processes, solving the problems of excessive moisture, mold and insect growth from the root. Unlike traditional external heating, microwaves can penetrate the entire dried chili, causing the moisture in the flesh, seeds, and folds of the chili to be heated and vaporized simultaneously, resulting in uniform dehydration inside and outside, reducing the situation of external dryness and internal wetness, and uneven dryness and wetness. The moisture is controlled within the storage and transportation standard range.
The entire processing speed is extremely fast, without the need for prolonged high-temperature roasting, greatly reducing the processing cycle and adapting to continuous batch production in factories. At the same time, the processing is clean and hygienic, which can simultaneously kill bacteria and insect eggs hidden in dried chili peppers, reducing problems such as insect infestation, mold growth, and spoilage from the source.
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