Any way to get rid of heat and keep flavor?
I’ve grown a variety of hot peppers for years. Mainly habanero, Tabasco, and a local Cheyenne type. I have several large jars full of mashed peppers in vinegar. The non vinegar ones eventually went bad, and I’ve thrown liters of vinegared ones away before because it was unused on the shelf for 10 years.
We would like to eat it straight as it looks now - nice bright good smell mash - but it’s dangerous hot.
If I add vinegar to edible level, it’s so runny and vinegar taste it’s basically a pepper flavored vinegar.
I tried sugar, doesn’t lower heat enough.
I tried fermenting - same heat problem.
Any ideas?
Dont grow hot peppers!
Have you tried the low heat varieties?
Yeah nothing works. I know of no way to reduce heat. I powder them, an also dry whole. Drying whole I prefer as you don’t dry them bone dry. I have ones 2 years old and they smell and taste great! Yeah use milder peppers like lemon drop, still hot, but not like habanero. All the Peruvian peppers are cool, hot but not smoking hot. Such as Aji Amarillo, or Aji Crystal. Another great one like that is the fish pepper. One of my favorites. For even less heat jalapeno peppers fit the bill, if you want even less hungarian wax or poblano and a number of hatch type green chili peppers. Of course you could go with the seasoning peppers that have no heat but have habanero flavor like Grenada. or Trinidad Perfume.
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I grow Cheyenne for hot sauce or dried pepper. I also grow hot banana and Hungarian wax, those two are less hot and good for stir fry.
Good suggestions guys, and those sound like really nice peppers Drew. I may have to try getting a hold of seeds somehow. Here in Japan the selection of pepper plants is very limited. I grew them all the last couple of years. Habaneros and tobacco grew the best, huge healthy plants, lots of gorgeous peppers with no pest trouble. We like their flavor too, just too hot.
Jalapeño plants are available, but difficult to get and comparatively expensive. Both years I grew them they were shockingly the worst performers, suffering heavily from insect damage - even worse than my sweet bell peppers. Plants were stunted, and produced comparatively poor fruit. But jalapeños are probably our favorite eating hot pepper, and we used what ones we did get up quickly. They were a good heat.
I can send you seed, I have not found a good jalapeno yet, one that is prolific, it’s a hybrid, but it’s smoking hot! The Peruvian peppers are hot but not like habaneros. They also grow well here in my zone 6. They are from a mountainous region and can take the cold. My Lemon Drop plant had hundreds of peppers. The Fish pepper is cool to, variegated. If you PM me, i can send you my list of seed I have.
There is a jalapeno type pepper that looks and tastes all like jalapeno but it is not hot.
Much of the heat is in the seeds and innards of the peppers. So if you opened them up and removed seeds and webbing then dried them, it should reduce the heat to a degree. However starting with habaneros you will still likely be quite hot.
Best bet is to switch to less hot varieties.
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Thanks a lot Drew. The list of peppers that are in the ballpark is helpful. I can try an online search for them localy, but I doubt they have them here.
Well I can take care of you next year, just a letter, it should be fine. The best growing jalapeno I know of is Jalafuego(F1). It’s the most productive I have seen. It’s hot though for a jalapeno!
The Starfish pepper is not super hot and a super good grower. Probably bishops cap is too, I have yet to grow it. But it is a similar pepper.
Starfish
Aji Lemon or Lemon Drop
I grew a cow horn pepper last year and what I really liked about it was that if you wanted a mild pepper you could pick it while it was small but if you wanted more heat you could let it grow full size and it was plenty hot for me. It had a good flavor too, I like the flavor of habaneros but jalapeños don’t really appeal to me. The cow horn had a really nice flavor, like a chilly pepper.
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Hots and sweets as many of you know can cross and then all bets are off. Sweet peppers may taste hot when the crosses occur and it’s a real challenge to guess what your biting into! Habenero, Thai dragon, jalapeño are my favorite hot peppers. Jalapeño are highly productive here as are all hot peppers I’ve grown whereas sweet peppers such as California wonder are unproductive until fall when it cools down. In Kansas summers must be a little hot for peppers because the leaves wilt and the plants are stressed much of the time regardless of how much water we give them.
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I’m going to pickle some garlic with some hot peppers. Looking forward to it…
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How 'bout the Chocolate Bhutlah pepper?
(warning: explicit language)
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We canned a bunch of sweet Jalapeño’s last week, I think we ended up with about 10 pints or so. The peppers weren’t as hot as I like them, but I really like the combo of the sour and sweet with a back kick of heat.
I’m going to try some 7 pot super-hots next year, but will need to get them started way earlier than March, maybe Jan, even.
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Mix them with sweet peppers, or any non-hot fruit. Tomatillos work well but so would tomatoes or even peaches.
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Making some pickled garlic with some of my hot peppers… These guys are really hot!
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