I bought a bag of dried Arbol Peppers at Aldi's--but now I don't know what to do with them.  There are no suggestions on the package at all.  I'm not even sure if these are an extremely hot variety of peppers!  Does anyone have any suggestions on how to use them?  Thanks!

The arbol chile pepper is related to the cayenne and packs about the same punch on the hotness scale.    We grow and dry hot peppers and then cook with them all winter long. 

You could run them through a blender or spice grinder to make your own chile powder (Let them sit before taking the lid off, so the 'dust' settles.... breathing in chile pepper dust sucks, LOL).  Add them to oil to make your own spicy oil,  or use them as they are in your favorite recipes.  I like to reconstitute dried peppers by letting them sit in cold water for 30 minutes or so until they plump back up.

1/2 cup of dried peppers is roughly equal to one cup of fresh peppers, so if you don't want to reconstitute them before using in a recipe, you'll probably want to adjust the amount and use less than the recipe calls for. 

We vacuum seal ours, but any airtight packaging will work to store them.

Some good info and recipes for arbol peppers:

http://www.essortment.com/food/cookdriedchili_ttbt.htm

http://search.freefind.com/find.html?id=7028307&pageid=r&mode=ALL&n=0&query=arbol

http://www.astray.com/recipes/?show=Arbol%20chile%20con%20carne

I had more sites, but couldn't get the links to work.  Many come up if you run a search for arbol chile peppers.

Wow!  Jo, many many thanks for the great suggestions, and the websites.  I never thought of grinding some, that's a great idea.  I love hot 'n' spicy foods.  I'm off to search for some other recipes.  Thanks again!!