Benquo discusses an attempt to make a hot pepper less than hot:
The story goes something like this. A Mexican restaurant somewhere in the central US makes and serves a salsa using the original, spicy Jalapeño pepper. A lot of people try it. Many of these people do not like spicy food at all. Maybe they are unusually sensitive to capsaicin. Maybe their bodies do not release the usual endorphins in response to spice. Maybe they just aren’t used to it. Regardless, there are people who do not like it, who ask for something milder. But they still want a salsa made with Jalapeños. This is the thing that puzzles me, and I’ll come back to it later, but for now we’ll accept this as a given: they do not like spicy food, but they want to eat a salsa – a mild, unspicy salsa – with Jalapeños.
So the restaurant has a few options. They can refuse to accommodate their customers, and either teach them to appreciate spice, or lose their business. They can make the salsa milder by putting less Jalapeño in it. They can try to sell the customers something different than what they asked for. Or, they can do the least convenient possible thing, and try to change the constitution of the Jalapeño pepper itself. Naturally, they do the least convenient possible thing, and demand a hot pepper that is not hot.
It would be interesting to see if bell peppers were used in in replacement of jalapenos if a non-foodie like me would be able to tell the difference. Perhaps not, though I am less sure than he (she?) is.
As someone with diminished tastebuds, I crave spice. As much as possible, this side of the ghost pepper. So a part of me would be quite bummed if they ever do create a non-spicy pepper. (I’m surprised it’s that difficult. Isn’t it mostly like the jalapeno version of the seedless watermelon?) That was one of my huge complaints about Arapaho cuisine, they didn’t believe in spicing things up.
On the other hand, it’s easier for me to add spiciness than it is for someone else to remove it. Give me a bottle of Sriracha or whatever and I can make it to how I like it. On the other hand, I whine bitterly when I am forced into alchemy. I like it when I get it exactly as I want it and don’t have to worry about it.
I do wonder – particularly in Benquo is right about bell peppers being an identical non-spicy substitute – if it does say something about our culture or perhaps humanity in general . I mean, there is a certain familiarity with the notion of not wanting to be considered so weak as to have the jalapeno removed or replaced with bell peppers, and yet not wanting to admit to it for self-esteem purposes or somesuch.
I can’t imagine telling a server in a restaurant that I don’t like x but I really, really want x salsa.
I grow bell peppers, banana peppers and usually some hot peppers. If you plant them too close together the bees will cross pollinate them and you can end up with some very hot banana and bell peppers. I like hot food and I plant the bananas next to the jalapenos, or habaneros so the so the bananas peppers will get hotter. Then we deseed them and stuff them with shrimp and hot monterey jack cheese and freeze them for hor devours. One can also plant yellow, red and purple bells together and get some really weird striations. The bees will also cross pollinate the squashes. One year I ended up with a combo butternut and acorn squash to looked funny but tasted good.Report
Habaneros have a flavor beyond just capsaicin that is different from bell peppers. I haven’t been able to detect that with jalapeños, however.
Second dexter on squashes. Anything in the same family does the trick, in fact. One year we had yellow- and green-striped squashcumbers that were the size of rugby balls.Report
Jason, Were the squashcumbers edible? The acorn/butternut hybrid looked a little funny and definitely tasted different, but they still tasted good.Report
Yeah, I’d be ready to jump on in for an acorn/butternut hybrid — cook him until he’s soft with some browned butter and cinnamon, maybe — but I’d be wary of crossing a regular yellow squash with a cucumber.Report
why not just use bell pepper? jalapeno basically tastes like bell pepper anyway.Report
You only think that because farmers have been making jalapeños so mild for years now that some of them really do taste like bell peppers. Which defeats the point of having a jalapeño at all, if you ask me — if I’m using a jalapeño, it’s precisely because I want a medium level of heat – not as much as a habañero but more than a bell.Report
We should also clarify whether we are talking about fresh peppers or pickled ones. I tend to find the fresh variety not only hotter, but with a crisper taste that captures more of the pepper’s actual flavor. They are the only ones I use when making a jalapeno-infused vodka.Report
There’s no ñ in habanero.Report
i don’t like the taste of bell peppers, so i’m an habanero and up kinda guy. jalapenos just taste like bell peppers to me.
habanero is a bit too much like bell peppers in its less mutated forms but if you get a particularly fruity strain it’s pretty deece. especially when blended or used in marinade.Report
Jalapenos have been bred in America to be way way way less hot than they were originally.
Our local jalapeno growers (near Pittsburgh) still use the original varietal — it’s not habanero level, but it’s good.
A Jalapeno should be hot. In places where folks like “original recipes”, it still is.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/05/01/1206044/-How-Your-Aunt-Martha-Uncle-Jim-From-South-Bend-IL-Ruined-the-Jalapeno-PepperReport
I use a jalapeño or serrano paste (crushed jalapeño or serrano, water, and salt) on pretty much anything I eat that even resembles Mexican or Tex-Mex, and I can’t imagine using bell peppers. The tastes are completely different to me (I eat bell peppers, just not in a paste).Report
I use dried dundicuts in pretty much everything.
5 in a stirfry, one or two in beef stew… pretty much everywhere.Report
Water and soil/nutrients can change the spice level of jalapenos by 2-300% (based on my uncalibrated tongue) Ran some experiments last year on soil (loam, potting (fertilized loam), sand, composted loam) and water (drip, continuous reservoir, arid/soak) and found that sandy low-fertilized (5% composted) soil and arid/soak cycles produced the hottest peppers (and the most work/pepper) with composted/drip a close second with much less work/pepper.Report
Yeah, there is that too.
Gardeners pamper their plants too much to make good hot peppers.
(corollary: gardeners hate people who grow hot peppers).Report
Soil acidity has something to do with that as well.
Packing pine needles around the plants to acidify the soil is an old growers’ trick to make the peppers hotter.Report
As I recall, the Chili’s restaurant chain increased the heat of their peppers last year by hiring a sadistic farmer to make the plants really, really angry.
Anyway, as something of a chili head (I kept a bhut jolokia – ghost chili – for two years by wintering it my closet under grow lights), let me mention that there are plenty of sites with great pepper varieties that we don’t normally see in the US, even ones that aren’t seen in Mexico.
The apricot habanero has all the habanero flavor but only 500 Scoville units, hardly more than a bell. Similar mild habaneros are the NuMex suave red (or orange), and some of the South American Aji Dulce peppers. Google one and all the seed company links will lead you to the rest. It’s a lot of fun to grow peppers that none of your friends have even heard of, peppers that are not only not the same varieties we usually see, but not even in the same species.Report
This reminds me of the existence of Kahlua-flavored coffee drinks. Kahlua is coffee-flavored liqueur. What’s the purpose of a non-alcoholic Kahlua-flavored coffee? It’s coffee-flavored coffee. People just have a fascination with brands.Report
Maybe you don’t want grapefruit taste in the morning?Report
Aren’t the seeds the primary source of heat in jalapenos? Or is that a myth? If it’s true, couldn’t you just seed the jalapenos but use the flesh?
Of course, as Dexter points out, hating X but wanting X salsa kind of makes you an ass.Report
De-seeded peppers are more mild, but there is still substantial capsaicin in the flesh of a good jalapeño pepper.Report
Thanks for illuminating that. I wonder if the difference would be sufficient for these x-but-not-x folks.Report
Was this post inspired by my comment compared the Jalapeno Poppers at Arby’s and Sonic?Report
Twas not, actually. It’d been sitting in the bin for a while.Report
:'(Report