My grandpa was a bit of an amateur horticulturalist and among his other hobby plants were some small pepper plants that produced some skinny shiny peppers, predominantly white, with purple streaks shot through them. They were tapered like your basic Louisiana Tabasco hot pepper but shorter, and much waxier and shinier, with brighter green for the stem.
They were considered inedible, too hot to eat.
I can be a bit of a jackass, and this was most certainly no less true of me when I was 14. Yes, I tried one. About 45 minutes after the funnly little lightning-like flashes of light stopped interfering with my vision and the hiccups started to subside and the watering of my eyes simmered down to a level that permitted me to see, more or less, I managed to retrieve my tongue back inside my oral cavity and regained a major portion of my dignity.
Based on subsequent experience, I would say that these were in the same league as habañero or scotch bonnet peppers, although since there is a lot of variation among peppers of the same species (I have also run across some hiccup-making, eyeball-flashing, tongue-stunning jalapeños homegrown in a neighbor’s garden) these white-and-purple peppers may not have always averaged quite so hot. Then again, they did have the reputation.
Never ran across them as an adult. My grandpa allegedly called them “turkey peppers”. I see from an online search that the “turkey pepper” is also known as the “bird pepper” or the “pequin” and receives some respectable rating.
From those of you who have sampled the glossy white and purple, how do you rate it, heat-wise, against the Scotch Bonnet and Habañero?
[ul]
[li]Pequin Pepper, 75,000 Scoville units[/li][li]Habanero chile, 300,000 Scoville Units[/li][li]Scotch bonnet, 300,000 Scoville Units[/li]
Gripping the side of the commode in agony during the next day’s bowel movement: Priceless.
[/ul]
Pequin peppers are certainly respectable, at 75,000 Su. Jalapenos only run about 7,000. But compare them to the pepper extract sauces, where they take pure capsaicin and concentrate it, to get sauces with 7,100,000 Su, and you’re talking major hurt. I can’t handle anything over 350,000 Su myself, and I’ve been training for years.
Well, Qadgop, I am impressed. I went to school in WI and return there every summer, and the locals are intimidated by black pepper. I can’t take anything more than Dave’s Insanity, but I am not sure there is a point to anything more than that, unless you are a masochist. Not that there’s anything wrong with that…
When I go to Vietnamese restaurants they serve little peppers about 30mm to 50mm lon, and about 10mm wide. They come in red or green and have shiny skins. Are these called “Thai chillis”? I’ve never asked. They’re really tasty.
I’m not your typical Wisconsinite, Lamar. My dad was a native cheesehead too, but as one of 12 kids in the depression, food was short, and rather than go home and get beaten out of dinner, he’d go next-door to the mexican migrant laborers to get fed. He passed his love for things spicy & exotic to me.