Posted on 07/01/2023 8:06:10 PM PDT by Yardstick
Throw out those bogus shopping tips about pepper size. Decades of deliberate planning created a less-hot jalapeño.
It’s not just you: jalapeño peppers are less spicy and less predictable than ever before. As heat-seekers chase ever-fiercer varieties of pepper—Carolina reapers, scorpions, ghosts—the classic jalapeño is going in the opposite direction. And the long-term “de-spicification” of the jalapeño is a deliberate choice, not the product of a bad season of weather.
This investigation began in my own kitchen. After months of buying heat-free jalapeños, I started texting chefs around Dallas to see if they were having the same experience. Many agreed. One prominent chef favors serranos instead. Regino Rojas of Revolver Taco Lounge suggested jalapeños are now “more veggie-like than chile.” Luis Olvera, owner of Trompo, said that jalapeños now have so much less heat that “I tell my staff, ‘I think my hands are just too damn sweet,’ because I can’t make salsa spicy enough anymore.”
[snip]
There’s truth to all these theories, but Walker says they are only secondary factors.
“As more growers have adopted drip irrigation, more high-tech farming tools to grow the peppers, they’ll tend to be milder,” Walker told me first, as a sort of throat-clearing exercise before the real explanation. “But there’s more to it than that.”
The truth is more like a vast industrial scheme to make the jalapeño more predictable—and less hot.
(Excerpt) Read more at dmagazine.com ...
I don't know if it was Ed that developed Apollo, but that pepper supposedly has about the same scoville rating as pepper X
I’ve always preferred Serranos, and sometimes I’ll break one and take a little taste in the store, just to make sure they have enough heat!
When I make my breakfast potatoes, instead of chopped green pepper and onions, I use jalapeños and onions. Gives it a nice kick.
Great suggestion...I’ll pass it on to the cook. Thanks!
J/k, gloves are vital as you now know the hard way.
Never cared for jalapeños, not because of the heat or lack thereof but to me they just taste nasty.
Dried habanero flakes on my scrambled eggs, now that’s a treat!
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