Savina habenero!!! 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.. 'Scoville' units!!! (kidding, but they're hot.)
Posted on 11/21/2004 1:11:49 AM PST by neverdem
WESLACO, Tex., Nov. 18 - It's a burning issue for some hot-pepper lovers: Whatever possessed Kevin M. Crosby to create the mild habanero?
For Dr. Crosby, a plant geneticist at the Texas A&M Agricultural Experiment Station here near the Mexican border, the answer is simple: "I'm not going to take away the regular habanero. You can still grow and eat that, if you want to kill yourself."
But for those who prize the fieriest domesticated Capsicum for its taste and health-boosting qualities, Dr. Crosby and the research station in the Rio Grande Valley have developed and patented the TAM Mild Habanero, with less than half the bite of the familiar jalapeño (which A&M scientists also previously produced in a milder version).
With worldwide pepper consumption on the rise, according to industry experts, the new variety - a heart-shaped nugget bred in benign golden yellow to distinguish it from the alarming orange original, the common Yucatan habanero - is beginning to reach store shelves, to the delight of processors and the research station, which stands to earn unspecified royalties if the new pepper catches on.
"I love it," said Josh Ruiz, a local farmer whose pickers this week filled some 200 boxes of the peppers to be sold to grocers for about $35 a box. "It yields good and I'm able to eat it." As for the Yucatan habanero, he said, "My stomach just can't take it."
By comparison, if a regular jalapeño scores between 5,000 and 10,000 units on the Scoville scale of pepper hotness based on the amount of the chemical capsaicin (cap-SAY-sin), and a regular habanero averages around 300,000 to 400,000 units, A&M's mild version registers a tepid 2,300, or barely one-hundredth of its coolest formidable namesake. A bell pepper, by the way, scores zero.
Not everyone hails the breakthrough. Dr. Crosby, 33, a native Texan and a distant relative of the crooner Bing, said "chili pepper fanatics" have called with rude questions about what he was thinking and why he was wasting his time. A Mexican voiced complete bewilderment. Why, he asked Dr. Crosby, would you want a habanero that's not hot?
Dr. Crosby said he sympathized. He had, after all, seen Mayans in the Yucatan eating their way through plates of habaneros dipped in salt. "I've heard it said it's addictive," he said.
But he said most people should not try this at home, not even with the most potent antidote at the ready, ice cream. (Milk is second best.)
The center's director, Jose M. Amador, said people in Mexico had called wondering if A&M was out to "ruin" the habanero, and asking, "What are you, crazy?" There was even a move afoot in Mexico, he said, to trademark the Yucatan habanero in the same way, say, that the French protect Champagne and Cognac, but he shrugged off its prospects.
Actually, Dr. Amador said, he came from Havana, for which the pepper is named, but had never eaten it there, Cuban cuisine not being known for its spiciness. With the same confusion, Dr. Crosby said, the habanero's scientific name became Capsium Chinense, although the pepper undoubtedly reached China via the tropical Americas.
Last week, Dr. Crosby was among 225 scientists, growers and processors who gathered at the 17th International Pepper Conference in Naples, Fla. Business was booming, a conference announcement said: "In recent years, interest and demand for peppers has increased dramatically worldwide, and peppers are no longer considered a minor crop in the global market."
Specialty peppers, including hot peppers, were a particularly fast-growing part of the market, perhaps increasing by 5 percent a year, said Gene McAvoy, the conference organizer and a regional extension agent at the University of Florida in Labelle.
Dr. Crosby, who delivered a paper on breeding peppers for enhanced health through plant chemicals like carotenoids, flavonoids and ascorbic acid, said capsaicin was being studied as a stroke preventive. Other chemicals in peppers were potent antioxidants and protected against macular degeneration.
The process to produce a more palatable habanero, he said, began with cross-breeding a regular hot variety with germ plasm from a wild heatless pepper from Bolivia. "We took pollen from the hot to pollinate the heatless to create a hybrid," he said. The hybrid was then self-pollinated, fertilized with its own pollen, to inbreed desired qualities and then, Dr. Crosby said, "backcrossed to the hot to recover more of its genes for flavor." That was repeated for eight generations, or four years at two growing seasons a year, to produce the TAM Mild Habanero. He was breeding it in yellow but could also produce it in white and red, he said.
"It's a pretty fruit," said Dr. Crosby, taking a bite and chewing without flinching. "It's got the flavor but it doesn't kill you."
Agreed. Long before I knew better, I chomped down on one of them at a Thai restaurant. The staff brought a dish of coconut ice cream as the cure. It worked.
Later I discovered the Thai condiment "prik paha", which is a very small dish of fish sauce with one or two chopped up red or green chiles mixed in. This stuff is addictive, and soon it was on my omlets, rice, noodles, everything.
"Judge # 3 (Frank) -- Holy s**t! What the hell is this stuff? You could remove dried paint from your driveway. Took me two beers to put the flames out...."
I call me wife's chile verde "Two Beer Chili Verde", 'cause when it's made right, ya definitely need a couple o' beers to go with it.
Strange thing about chilis. The heat content changes from batch to batch. Must be a whole lot of "breeding" going on out there.
Amen!
I ate those with salt and beer. Then I went poopy the next day and haven't touched them since:)
After eating Habaneros, and it comes time to have a bowel movement, you'd better have a seatbelt and a fire extinguisher handy!
For some real zing: Try eating habanero straight.
Title should be "PC crowd attacks peppers!!"
>>I had to dump grated cheese on it, and my dog kept running to the water dish after every bite.<<
But he kept coming back! That's hysterical!
Ahhh. The litttle purple ones the Thai call 'rat droppings'...
The Boogie enjoys chili, burritos – actually, anything that I cook. He demands his 10%.
That sounds like 'prik num bah' to me...
Amen! Preach it, Brother Dog! Testify!
Hmmm, never had any problems ordering it in Thailand. Maybe there are different pronunciations?
The hotter the better :) I spent two weeks in Thailand last January ... man, do they know how to spice things up.
Probably I've heard both prik and pik used for sauce.
Like oil and awl...
We grow long green chile and you would be surprised how few really want HOT. We grow varieties that are as mild as bell peppers so that we can sell them to the masses. OTH, they have bred some chile that is hotter than you can believe! The people picking them have to wear gloves and masks.
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