I like my food spicy, but I won't snack on anything hotter than a Serrano or cook with anything hotter than a Habanero. Anything hotter than those two, I'm getting all heat and no flavor.
I should say that I didn't used to cook with anything hotter than a Habanero - due to Lisa's meds, she's got a hyper sensitivity to any kind of hot pepper. The other night she made a chicken taco soup and I had to punch mine up with some Habanero sauce.
Before I moved out here and was taking long road trips on a fairly regular basis, I never used to bring coffee with me to keep me alert, but I would buy a bag of Jalapenos. If I started feeling fatigued, I'd eat one of those to wake me up. Worked like a charm without the residual effects of caffeine.
Huh, I'll have to give Jalapenos a try next summer. Construction is pretty much shut down for the winter so I hibernate for the next 5 months then don't get any sleep in the summer.
ReplyDeleteWhat is your favorite Hot Sauce, Ken? For eggs mines Texas Pete, but I think that's from it always being there in the mess hall. Tabasco is too vinegary for my tastes. I do like Cholula when I can get it. I always pick up a bottle or two when I find it.
ReplyDeleteI like El Yucateca habanero sauce on my eggs and tacos and Mrs Renfro's habanero salsa for dipping and in my burritos.
DeleteYou can buy the sauce at Walmart, but the salsa is hit & miss. I find it most regularly at Mike's Foodland, a small independent market in Westmoreland, but sometimes I have to order it directly from Mrs Renfro's site.
I can get the El Yucateca over here in Grafenwöhr but its crazy expensive. For Salsa I usually go with Clemente Jacques, since I can find it over here and unlike the nasty crap Germans call Salsa it has no sugar in it.
DeleteThe El Yucateca here in the States runs $2.85 for a 4 ounce bottle. I go through a bottle a week. I love it on my breakfast eggs.
Delete12.99€ a bottle here lol
DeleteHOLY SHIT!!!!!
DeleteFor us, slicing the jalapeno side and removing the seed pod at stem removes some of the heat and still retains flavor. To up the heat, grilling the peppers before serving as an appetizer will get your tongue dialing the fire department.
ReplyDeleteI normally sprinkle my sandwich with a bit of cayenne powder. I carry a small container of it in my pocket when I go out. It has some health benefits, but in moderation. Too much for some will have the opposite effect.
Why would you want to remove the heat?
DeleteYessir, when I cook with jalapenos, I fire roast them too. It brings out both heat and flavor and seems to sweeten them up just a bit.
A few weeks back I grilled a jalapeno, holy shit did it surprise me!
DeleteSurprised me too the first time I did it.
DeleteThe roasting would explain that slice of pizza topped with jalapeno. That was a lot hotter than expected...
DeleteA local restaurant did up jalapenos like fried okra, called it "Okra with an attitude". That wasn't particularly hot, just had a nice zing to it.
I make jalapeño jelly to pour over cream cheese and use as tortilla dip. Did the same with habaneros, once, but not worth the pain of habanero steam filled kitchen.
ReplyDeleteThe fumes are rather strong with the habaneros, aren't they? If you're rendering them down, that's a job for the back porch.
DeleteI ground five Habaneros to make pepper spray. I wore a diving mask, respirator with new fume cartridges, longsleeve shirt buttoned tight, a neckerchief, and dishwashing gloves.
DeleteEven with a steady light wind and tight seal on the food chopper, my eyes teared so much that I couldn't see. About 20 minutes after I finished grinding, I slowly removed the lid. I wasn't wearing the respirator so immediately I began choking and could hardly get a breath.
Anyway, I added that to a gallon of water with a capful of bleach and left it to stew in the sun for a few days. Homemade pepper spray. You can buy rechargeable cannisters very inexpensively. Shoots a stream about 12 feet.
I grew jalapeños for the first time in North Carolina (prior to this was the desert of Nevada). There was no heat at all in the NC jalapeños. The plants were not stressed enough while the peppers grew.
ReplyDeleteInteresting trick to use them to keep awake. I'll have to try that next road trip.
Chilis get their heat when the farmers cut off their water the last couple weeks before harvest. That's hard to do when it rains as much as it does in our climate.
DeleteI grew Jalapeno's this year for the 1st time. It was an extra wet growing season. Those rascals were too hot for me but I'm a hot pepper lightweight compared to most. I placed about a dozen of them in my in my work shop to dry, a mouse is carrying them away one by one. I find them scattered around the place mostly eaten. This mouse is a badass and I'm going to war with it.
DeleteIt's surprising that had much heat to them at all in a wet climate.
DeleteWhen we first moved here I tried growing some not knowing it was water deprivation before the harvest that gave them their heat. I got maybe 2 per plant that were hot, the rest were like eating bell peppers.
Years ago I started having jalapenos put on my subway sandwich and really liked them. They must do something to calm them down and by no means have I given up. I like the flavor, not the heat.
DeleteMaybe I'll try the Poblano and see if it's more to my liking, I might have to build up to the fiery ones slowly
DeletePoblanos can vary widely. I've had some that were much hotter than jalapeños. The hottest was at an IHOP in Kentucky or all places.
DeleteI use IR PAR 38 lamps to burn the plant a bit. This stresses them. Also, each morning spray a mix of epsom salt (about 2 tspn in one qt water) on the peppr plants. My brother in ID shared that tip. For years he has had great success growing Carolina Reapers, Scorpions, and a couple other varieties.
DeleteWhere's the ghost pepper, really good, the hot doesn't last long and i'm eating more
ReplyDeletehttps://www.vernscheese.com/shop-online/ghost-pepper-cheese-spread/
Cheese spread? Dairy kills heat.
DeleteIt's still pretty damn hot
DeleteNo doubt.
DeleteThe wifey and I grow jalapeños here in upstate NY. I pickle them and use on my samitches. The flavor is great and the heat is good for me. Don't know how hot they are compartively.
ReplyDeleteA favorite trick with the Caribbean stewed meat dishes is to add a couple of Scotch Bonnets, whole, with the stem intact, and let them cook down with the meat. You have to be careful not to let them burst or become torn when stirring the pot - they have to remain intact. They're removed once the dish is mostly cooked - and in this way, you get all of the nice Scotch Bonnet pepper flavor, but none of the heat - well, maybe just a little bit. But if they're ruptured in any way, look out.
ReplyDeleteI grow variety of peppers up to the Thai pepper. I will dry the Thai and remove half the seeds and drop the rest in a pepper mill. The seeds have the heat and the rest is flavor. I have had hotter cayenne.
ReplyDeleteDoes anyone know where the Carolina Reaper falls in the list?
ReplyDeleteAt 1,640,000 SHU, it blows everything else in that picture out of the water.
DeleteNever tried one, never will.
The reaper is one of the hottest peppers available on the market. Ed Curie, the breeder of the Carolina Reaper, has come up with a supposedly new " hottest pepper in the world " called Pepper X....
DeleteJD
I believe there is now a hotter pepper than the Carolina Reaper but it's part CR.
DeleteThe reaper is now the second hottest pepper in the world-I grow the reaper here in Nevada --Oh Baby!!!!-what a rush.
DeleteI've grown hot peppers for several years, everything from jalapeños to Carolina Reapers, it started just as a simple see what happens to a pretty much normal part of my garden... My favorite is the ghost to made a seasonal mix for cooking but habaneros and scotch bonnets are great to, especially with pineapple, peaches and mangos.
ReplyDeleteJD
Nice!
DeleteI remember eating a pepper in Viet Nam. A mamason had them in her garden. A bunch of us ate them and we were on fire. Anyone know what kind of pepper that was?
ReplyDeleteIf it was black or black turning to red and looked somewhat like a Thai chilli there is a pepper called either goats weed pepper or black cobra pepper depending on who you talk to... It also has a Vietnamese name but I'm not going to even try to get that right
DeleteJD
Hunan scoville 3,180,000
ReplyDelete