TOO HOT Peppers

[personalchef]

I planted Jalapenos, bells, pasellas (sp?) and something that I thought were a mild, Anaheim chili. They are producing like crazy, but they are so darn hot I can't think of how to use them. They are about 5-6 inches long, a very pale green and soft skinned.

My Jalapenos and bells are just as expected, but I don't know what to do with these ridiculously hot chilies.

Is there any way to tame them down? Also, any ideas what they might actually be?

[Chicagoland Chef du Jour]

I would wear gloves & goggles when handling

Removing the seeds & white veins inside makes them less hot but I'm sure you already know that. It sounds like you grew some crazy hot peppers!

I found this by googling:

http://www.ehow.com/how_8417724_tame-pepper.html

[3KillerBs]

Were they Bonnie plants?

I've gotten more mis-labled plants from Bonnie in the 5 years that I've lived in their market territory than I'd gotten in over 20 years of gardening before. This year's surprise is a "Big Bertha" that turned out to be something that resembles an ancho.

If you don't want to just give away your overly-hot peppers to someone who loves the fire try making pepper jelly. The sugar in the jelly tones down the heat dramatically.

I use the Hot Pepper Relish recipe from inside the Sure-Jell box but ended up using more hot pepper and less bell pepper because the first batches were too mild for me.

Once you have the hot pepper jelly its not only excellent with cream cheese on crackers but it makes a splendid glaze for baked chicken or country ribs and a tasty condiment for any grilled meat.

[3KillerBs]

Chicagoland Chef du Jour wrote:
I would wear gloves & goggles when handling

...

Definitely. And not those thin gloves either -- the good, blue ones.

Not knowing that my "Big Bertha" was an ancho in disguise (I'd put the smaller size and thinner walls down to the effects of 3 weeks with no rain), I ended up with capsaicin up my nose, in my eyes, and burning under my fingernails for hours. It wasn't until the 3rd day that I could touch my face without a burn.

[Zeldaz]

Anchos/poblanos are the mildest chiles, I suspect if it was that hot it was something else.
Personalchef, you can roast your chiles and freeze them in small batches. They are easier to peel after freezing and thawing. They could be Sandias, which is a hot variety of Anaheim.

[Molly53]

Sub your hot peppers for the habaneros here:
Habanero Mango Hot Sauce
Habanero BBQ Sauce
Habanero Salsa
Hot As Hell Habanero Zucchini Jelly
Habanero Gold Jelly (DELICIOUS over cream cheese/served with crackers)

You can also dry them until crispy and crumble; sprinkle over pizza or whenever you want a little 'snap' in whatever it is you're eating. They'll last nearly forever, dried.

[Chocolatl]

Seed them, remove the membranes (very carefully) and chop them very small. Oddly enough, while cutting garlic and onion into smaller pieces increases their bite, with hot peppers it seems to work the other way around. You can freeze the pieces and use just a few in a dish.

[Chef Shadows]

If these peppers come to a sharp point then you have unripe cayenne peppers, let them ripen to red.Any hot peppers can be dried for latter use or you can make hot sauce out of them.

[personalchef]

sorry i didn't reply sooner, got an injury and not been on line.

All of my pepper, except jalapinos are pointed.

[Zeldaz]

Asian chiles and Anaheims are pointed, as well. There's a chile ID tool online at http://chilibase.info/Identificeer.aspx which might be of help, and
http://www.chetbacon.com/peppers/Hotpeppers.html has lots of photos.

[3KillerBs]

Oh drat.

I was hoping to use those tools to identify my mystery pepper from a couple years ago.

It had been labeled a Yummy Bell and had much the same shape, though the 2 lobes were ill-defined and it was hot instead of sweet.

It looked like a flattened, squared-off, two-lobed jalapeno except for being bright, electric orange. It was about as hot as a jalapeno too.

I ought to have saved the seeds because it was quite tasty and the orange color made pretty hot pepper relish but, at the time, I thought that's what a Yummy Bell was supposed to be. Now I have no idea what it was and it doesn't match the photos in either of those collections.

[Rit]

Sort of like what Chocolatl suggested is what I did.
One year my son raised tons of jalepeno's that were pretty hot. I took and seeded what I could then chopped them really fine( I used a small food processer or one of those hand choppers to make it faster and easier) and froze them. Anytime I want to add just a little heat to a dish I break off a chunk of them and add it to my dish such as soups, chili, dips, etc. They still are warm but not quit so much as when they were fresh and this way I can take as little or as much as I want. I have kept them in the freezer for a long time and they still work fine.

[Chocolatl]

3KillerBs wrote:
Oh drat.

I was hoping to use those tools to identify my mystery pepper from a couple years ago.

It had been labeled a Yummy Bell and had much the same shape, though the 2 lobes were ill-defined and it was hot instead of sweet.

It looked like a flattened, squared-off, two-lobed jalapeno except for being bright, electric orange. It was about as hot as a jalapeno too.

I ought to have saved the seeds because it was quite tasty and the orange color made pretty hot pepper relish but, at the time, I thought that's what a Yummy Bell was supposed to be. Now I have no idea what it was and it doesn't match the photos in either of those collections.

Saving the seeds might not have helped. If it was a hybrid it wouldn't breed true, but would revert to one of the parent varieties, if the seeds germinated at all.

[3KillerBs]

Sometimes you get lucky in the genetic shake-up and can stabilize a hybrid after a number of generations of breeding back to itself. It would have been worth a try if I had the seed.

[Chocolatl]

I did some back-breeding once with the seeds from hybrid peppers I got at the local farmers market. I think it worked pretty well; it was a long time ago.