Four Recipes for Cooking With Hot Peppers
By Chef Mark R. Vogel
Some Like It Hot
Do you like hot food?
I mean really hot food? Are you a chile head? Then let’s talk hot peppers.
Chile peppers, of which there are almost 200 varieties, have been cultivated since 6200 B.C. All chile peppers get their fire from a compound called capsaicin, (kap-SAY-ih-sihn), the greatest deposits of which lie in the veins of the pepper.
The Scoville Scale measures chile peppers’ heat in increments from 500 to 400,000. Your average jalapeno registers about 3,500-4,500 Scolville units, while the mighty habanero, the hottest pepper on earth, tips the scale at 300,000-400,000.
Chiles are available in fresh and dried forms. A fresh chile’s dry counterpart will be somewhat hotter since dehydration intensifies the heat of the remaining substance.
Aside from the heat, chile peppers offer a distinct flavor, unequaled in the culinary world. Moreover, they are high in vitamins A and C as well as good sources of potassium, folic acid, and vitamin E.
Working With Peppers
It is advisable to wear rubber gloves while cutting them, especially the very hot ones. Capsaicin from the pepper quickly infiltrates the skin and can linger even after washing.
I learned this the hard way one day when I put my contacts in after cutting up habaneros. Yes, just imagine shoving a sharp pencil into your pupil.
There are countless hot pepper sauces on the market today. I prefer Franks, (made from cayenne peppers), and the classic Tabasco, (made from Tabasco peppers). Steer clear of the ultra hot sauces.
You can recognize them by the small bottle, the crazy name, and the price. These super hot sauces are an intensified extract of capsaicin.
They provide dangerously high heat but a relatively low flavor yield since the heat factor is not balanced by a proportionate amount of the other elements in the chile pepper. In other words, if each drop of the super-sauce equaled one jalapeno, you would get a greater depth of flavor from including five jalapenos in your dish than from five drops of the sauce.
Here’s my recipe for habanero sauce, which will provide blistering heat and satisfy all but the most masochistic fire-eaters.
Habanero Sauce
Ingredients
- 1 cup water
- ⅓ cup red wine vinegar
- 2 fresh habanero peppers or dried
- 1 large red bell pepper
- 1 tablespoon paprika
- 1 teaspoon cumin
- 1 teaspoon salt
Instructions
- Chop up the bell and habanero peppers, (or grind the habaneros if using dried).
- Place all of the ingredients in a saucepan, bring to a boil, and then simmer for 8-10 minutes.
- Finally, puree the mixture in a blender.
Habaneros aren’t even close to “hottest pepper on earth”.
JB, if not the hottest, they are right up there. The black habanero is 400,000 to 450,000 on the Scoville scale and according to Wikipedia, ‘A “Caribbean Red” is a variant within the habanero family with a Scoville rating of 500,000 units.’
If there are hotter JB, I would appreciate you letting me know which ones are and how hot they are so I can be sure to stay away from them. Thanks.
Two most well-known super hot peppers; Ghost pepper (~1 million Scoville) and Trinidad Scorpion (~2 million Scoville). There’s a handful of others that are hotter than habaneros but less than ghost peppers.
Naga Morich, Dorset Naga, Naga Viper, Carolina Reaper etc etc
According to Guinness World Records, “The hottest chilli is Smokin Ed’s ‘Carolina Reaper’, grown by The PuckerButt Pepper Company (USA), which rates at an average of 1,569,300 Scoville Heat Units (SHU), according to tests conducted by Winthrop University in South Carolina, USA, throughout 2012.”
The question is where are you going to get your hands on this or any of the peppers you mention. If you go into most supermarkets these days, you’re likely to find habanero peppers but good luck finding any of these others but thank you for bringing them to my attention.
Blair’s 5 a.m. is rated at 5,500,000.
I use it in my homemade sauce. bill