Chili peppers lose their sting upon drying?

[Ian Gil]

I was wondering if chili peppers (small hot red ones) lose their sting if they're laid out in the sun. I wanted to use them to discourage insects in my organic garden, drying and crushing them would make it easier to spread around where I need them, but I don't want to do that if it impedes their effectiveness. Another thought is to soak them in water or alcohol then spray the liquid but I don't think I could ever extract the active ingredient in them altogether that way, whereas with crushing nothing would be wasted provided the process of drying doesn't waste away the active ingredient.

Ian

[Frogleg]

The 'hot' in chiles is capsaicin, which is only slightly soluable in water, but quite soluable in alcohol and oil. Believe me, dried chiles, if they lose *any* of their piquancy, don't lose much. Whether they will discourage insects is another question. There are many bugs (I have sad experience with moths) who happily live on dried chiles.

[John DeBoo]

As FrogLeg said, they won't lose their bite at all being dried. In fact, if you don't roast, peel and freeze them, drying is how you preserve them. I've read where it discourages bugs but have not noticed anything one way or the other when I tried. I'm confident though that cats wouldn't like the stuff so maybe its a good deterrant to keep cats from crapping in your yard. There is certainly no downside I can think of if it doesn't work for cats or bugs. If you need some extra, most pizza places have containers or packets of the stuff too.