One other alternative, which gets you slightly nearer to a fresh chilli taste when cooking, is to freeze your fruits. Spread on a baking tray so they aren’t touching, and place in the freezer overnight. Once separately frozen, they can be bagged up and stored until needed for cooking. They will keep for six months or longer this way.

Before cooking with any chilli you should taste a small piece to test the strength; even those from the same plant can vary considerably. The heat is caused by the chemical capsaicin and, if you want to get scientific about it, is measured on the Scoville scale. Mild chillies such as jalapeños have a rating of around 1,000 Scoville heat units (SHUs) and the hottest chillies in the world, including the Dorset Naga and the Carolina Reaper, measure well over 1,000,000 SHUs.