One red jalapeño

Saturday I had 2 red jalapeños. I bbqed, so I left them on the cooler side of the grill for hours and made chipotles. Sunday morning I chopped one up and put it in scrambled eggs. It was tasty

Fresnos and jalapeños are different peppers. They’re not all that different heat and taste-wise, but fresnos are “stouter” in general (a bit shorter and fatter) than jalapeños. Or, rather, a bit more triangular.

To be sure they are as different as humans and Neanderthals, but to a pastywhite potato fed traitor to the crown like me, peppers-oids are classified according to heat & edibility: bell peppers, jalapenos, and poison. :slight_smile:

Even for pastywhite potato-oids, habaneros have their use; it’s just extremely diluted (for when you want a little bit of heat but almost no pepper flavor).

Beyond habs, though? The bhut jalokia and Carolina reaper and Trinidad scorpion and the like? Those have no use for anyone but drunk macho guys trying (and usually failing) to prove how tough they are.

The pepper was starting to look a little wrinkly, so I minced it with a sharp knife, crushed it with a wooden pestle, and put it in a jar with some white vinegar and kosher salt. I saved the seeds for planting.

But habs have such beautiful flavor. Why would you want to do something like that?

Chop loosely one red jalapeno, one green and one golden or yellow one. Make a no-sugar jelly with bottled apple juice and embed them in. Can and store for winter holiday. Eat with cheese for the crowd.

Because for most people, a concentration sufficient to taste that beautiful flavor is also a sufficient concentration of capsaicin to make a dish extremely painful, outweighing the pleasure gotten from the flavor.

But they do smell wonderful when you’re roasting them.

Well that’s just not true at all. I’ve never straight up eaten anything hotter than the bhut, but reapers and scorpions, etc make great hot sauces and salsas. I would think they would be excellent in chili as well, but haven’t tried yet.

I have eaten a few ghost chili peppers and things that come close.

The best use for those is like you say, to make super hot hot sauce and then put a few drops into various foods.

The bhut jolokias are actually quite lovely tasting, but my favorite were some chocolate Trinidad scorpions I grew last year. Those were probably the best tasting habanero-and-beyond hot peppers I’ve ever grown. Hot as heck, but you can also, you know, just eat a little less of them. At that Scoville range, it’s all a pretty similar level of heat to me.

I always like to use one or two red jalapenos when I’m making red thai curry, you know, cause green jalapenos in a red curry just won’t do :wink:

But 1 is a nice addition if you’re making a curry for 1-2 servings.

This is unrelated, but it took me till now to realize that your name doesn’t refer to a strange animal that’s half camel and half stringy sheepdog. :slight_smile:

Although the stringy sheepdog does lead you to the right language (though I myself am American, born of Polish parents, not Hungarian.)