4 ways to use up fresh chillies | Features | Jamie Oliver (2024)

Fresh chillies are amazing for adding bags of flavour, depth and heat to your favourite meals, but it’s easy to end up with surplus. Don’t just leave them to shrivel up at the back of the veg drawer – there are plenty of ways to use up those leftovers.

Bright and beautiful chillies are a great source of vitamin C, potassium and vitamin B6, and they’re also incredibly versatile. There are lots of ways to put them to good use, helping you waste less and save cash, all while creating tasty flavour bombs ready for future cooking.

If you’ve just got a little bit of chilli to preserve overnight, stand it, cut-side down, in some salt, and it will stay nice and fresh for a day. For one or more chillies, freeze them, pickle them, dry them out or transform them into a hot, spicy oil that’ll last you for ages, there’s so much you can do!

Freeze

It couldn’t be easier to freeze fresh chillies. Simply pop your leftovers in a reusable freezer bag or plastic box and store in the top drawer of your freezer. When you fancy giving your dish an extra kick, finely grate the frozen chilli to create a beautifully tasty ‘dust’ that’s perfect for cooking and marinades, or for sprinkling over everything from pastas, salads and starters to antipasti, meat and fish. And if you don’t need all of it, just chuck the rest back in the freezer for future use!

Pickle

Leftover chillies can easily be sliced up and pickled to create jars of zingy goodness. The excess juice from jars of gherkins or dill pickles is perfect for this – instead of throwing it away, top up the jar with a little vinegar, stir in a couple of teaspoons of sea salt and pop in a load of sliced chillies. This will preserve them for a couple of months for use in all sorts of dishes – they make a fab addition to sandwiches, tacos, nachos and fajitas.

Oil

There are two types of chilli oil you can make, using either fresh or dried chillies. With fresh chillies, once you’ve got about 10 saved up in the freezer, place them in a snug-fitting pan and cover with 2cm of olive oil. Pop on a low heat and slowly simmer them for 1 hour, then allow to cool. Remove and discard the stalks and seeds, scrape the chillies into a clean jam jar, pour over the infused oil and fill to the top with more oil. This will give you a round, warm, sweet-tasting oil.

Dried chilli oil really couldn’t be simpler. Crumble up a mixture of dried chillies (see below) – flaked, ground or homemade – and heat them in a dry pan for 1 minute, then cover with olive oil and pour the whole thing into a bottle. Whenever you remember, just give the bottle a shake to ensure maximum flavour infusion. This will give you a simpler savoury oil that can be used in lots of different ways.

Dry

It’s always useful to have dried chillies on hand to throw into everything from pasta to pad Thai. Dry your whole leftover chillies in a warm place, such as near a radiator or in an airing cupboard – or, if it’s a really nice day, try them in natural sunlight on a dark tray to maximise heat. Once dry, whack them whole into a jar, then crumble or flake them as needed.

You can also save the seeds from your dried chillies in an envelope and have a go at growing your own! Sow the seeds indoors in February or March (at about 21ºC) to germinate, then grow them somewhere warm and light, such as a sunny windowsill or conservatory, potting them on as required. Feed them every 10 days with natural liquid fertiliser and mist them regularly with water.