This easy-to-make chili pepper garland is a fun way to use extra peppers from your garden harvest!
What could be better than decor made from your own garden produce?! Pretty much nothing, in my opinion!
Last year was the “year of the pepper” in our garden! We had soooo many peppers! We pickled them, made tons of salsa, and even froze a bunch. But we still had more! So I dried a bunch of them in my dehydrator and then stored them away in mason jars until I had time to figure out what to do with them.
I ground up about half of them into a chili powder to use for culinary seasoning mixes. But I still had a bunch of dried peppers left over! After thinking about it for a while, I decided to try to string them and see if I could make a garland!
And it actually worked!
I had previously cut the stem-end of the peppers off before I dried them (since I wasn’t planning on making garland originally). Ideally, you could make your garland the traditional way that chili ristas are made, which involves stringing fresh chilis on twine by tying it around the stems. Since mine were already cut though, I had to do things a little different! While this isn’t the traditional way to make a chili pepper garland, it still worked out really well!
Since the peppers are green and red, it made a perfect Christmas garland! And, hey, you can’t beat free Christmas decor!
The garland is perfect tucked into the boughs of our tiny Christmas tree! We love to decorate with as many items as we can that are sourced right here on our little homestead! Another idea that I love are these beautiful Cinnamon Ornaments from Strength & Sunshine that you can easily make to add some more homemade charm to your tree!
Here’s how to make your own chili pepper garland!
Supplies:
- Dried chili peppers
- Thread or embroidery floss
- Needle
Directions:
Just a reminder: my chili peppers were already dried and I had removed the stem portion before I dried them since I wasn’t planning to make a garland. Leaving the stem on would work just as well!
- First, I de-seeded the peppers. I did this by sticking the tip of my potato peeler into the dried pepper to loosen the seeds. I then dumped the seeds into a separate bowl and saved them for making spice mixes at a later date. If your peppers are dried whole, you can skip this step.
- After the seeds were removed, I threaded a needle with a long piece of thread and tied the two loose ends of thread together in a knot.
- Punch the needle through the middle of the first chili pepper.
- Then, loop the thread around the pepper and back through the knotted end of the thread, creating a secure knot around the pepper. You only need to do this with the first pepper and the last pepper to create a secure garland.
- Continue punching the needle through the center of the peppers until they have all been strung onto the thread.
- Once you have strung all the peppers, secure the very last pepper by looping the thread around it (just like you did with the first one) and then tie a secure knot.
- Enjoy your new home-grown chili pepper garland!
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This is a typical Hungarian thing. If you go there you see it everywhere. I bought one which lasts at least 3 years and it looks really nice. Next time I might do one on my own.
I had no idea! What a fun cultural tradition! I will have to look that up and learn more about it 🙂
This is so festive! I love it. If I have an excess of chili peppers next year (I find it hard to grow any peppers in the short growing season of the PNW), I will make this! It looks great on the tree! Thanks 🙂
I love your tip on how to deseed the peppers! I’ve never heard to use a peeler before but it makes sense. I have to try it!
Kind of crazy, but it works really well ?
This is soooo cute!! I also love the idea of using a potato peeler to deseed peppers… brilliant!! Thanks for sharing and Merry Christmas 🙂