Thought I bought 2 jalapeño plants last May. But one of them turned out to be a habenero plant, and it’s producing many nice looking largish orange peppers.
I like things spicy, and I can go through many jalapeños in recipes, but habeneros take it to a different level. Not sure what to do with all these. My only two ideas are:
Use one pepper in marinade to make some jerk chicken this weekend.
Take the rest and make some habenero hot sauce that I will probably forget about in the back of the refrigerator.
Look around a little and you should find some recipes for habanero poppers. I always had problems getting the batter to stick, but other than that, they were quite good–used a feta/cheddar blend inside. Just be sure to do a thorough job getting the ribs and seeds out, or else :eek:.
Do what I did. Leave them on the plant until some turn yellow and others red. Pick some green. Make hot pepper jelly – recipes are online, its basically minimal sugar apple juice jelly with slices, or chucks of habanero. The point is, with these colors, this is Christmastime jelly. Its nice with deep-fried goat cheese, for example.
Not a recipe, but hot peppers store well in the freezer. Easy to chop or grate frozen whenever you need some in a recipe - I do this with jalapenos and Scotch bonnets from my garden.
Great ideas here, thanks! I like the pepper jelly idea, never tried that.
Also the grilling idea-- one thing I like about growing my own jalapeños is, I can let them turn red, slow-smoke them and grind up my own chipotle powder. It’s really hard to find red jalapeños at the store to do that. Unfortunately, my one jalapeño plant is not producing many peppers for some reason, so I won’t have dozens of red ones like last year. But why not habeneros chipotle? Worth a try maybe.
Or if I don’t get around to that, yeah, why not freeze them? I guess what I was really looking for was not so much recipes but ideas to not let them go to waste. I really like their flavor apart from the heat, but since they’re so hot I can’t use them up quickly. And I have a dozen or more ripe orange ones ready to pick with many more still green on the way.
If I’m inundated with jalapeños or habaneros, I use fishing line threaded on a biggish needle to make a hanging display for drying them. Just put the needle through the stem and hang them in the kitchen.
Wife did this last year - let some of them dry out for a week or so on your counter. Bake them in the oven on cookie sheet, then once they’re cool and dry, mix them in a food processor with some salt & pepper and a touch of vinegar (red wine vinegar if you prefer).
Let that mixture dry out for a day or two, and it will turn into a dry, flaky seasoning just like the crushed red pepper flakes you can buy in the store.
I’ve made pepper jelly using some habaneros mixed in with the usual bell and jalapeno peppers. We can’t live without the stuff now. As long as you cut out all the seeds this doesn’t have to be deadly hot but I can’t imagine what a pure habanero jelly would be like.
Well, you already mentioned jerk paste. That’s the first thing I do with my habaneros, and it freezes well.
When I have way more habaneros than I know what to do with (which is usually, because they’re pretty prolific plants), I throw a bunch in the food dehydrator and then either leave them whole or powder them up. Mixed with a little allspice, thyme, salt, and pepper, and you have a pretty good jerk-style dry rub, too.
Another idea is to make some pique, a Puerto Rican condiment. Stick a couple habaneros in a jar with some salt, pepper, oregano, and garlic, and you have a nice flavored vinegar that you can sprinkle over all sorts of things. There’s as many recipes as their households, so just google “pique recipe” for some ideas.
Habanero mango salsa. Yum. Also good in ceviche.
I make a hot sauce with habaneros blanched in vinegar, mango, kiwi, ginger, mustard powder and lemon juice. It’s excellent.
Whatever you do, do not remove the ribs and seeds of blanched habaneros with your bare hands.
I speak from experience.
And I second or third the recommendation for drying to make flakes.
Take the habaneros and carefully remove the ribs and seeds, tossing them in the trash.
Cut the remaining parts of the habaneros into strips and marinate them in olive oil and vinegar for 24 hours.
Drain the olive oil and vinegar, then torch the habaneros with a blowgun until they are thoroughly blackened.
Toss the blackened habanero strips into the garbage with everything else and listen to the grateful thanks from your tongue and throat for not setting them on fire.
I’m just about to get a big crop of habaneros, and I’m going to do what I do every year: “core” them by removing the stems and seeds, then smoke them in the Big Green Egg. Then I grind them up in a small coffee grinder to a fine powder. Incredible taste and heat.
Well, if the weather stays warm enough for them to mature, that is.
So I used a couple of the Habeneros to make jerk sauce for chicken I cooked on applewood yesterday and it turned out really, really good. Forgot how good jerk sauce is. Then today I made some spicy chicken soup using a couple more Habeneros, plus some jalapeños and cayenne peppers from the garden. Also turned out delicious.
One thing about peppers I’ve often noticed that I grow in my garden-- they’re not as hot as the ones I’m used to. One thing I’ve read is that to get peppers to reach their full spicy potential, you need to cut back on the water they get- keep them slightly water-starved. No way to do that this summer in SE Michigan- we’ve had a ton of rain all season. But it’s ok with the Habeneros- their heat has been tolerable while their unique flavor still comes through.
Next weekend I think I’ll try slow-smoking them and grinding them up for winter recipes…
I like the taste of habs but the heat is a little much for me (I’m more of a Serrano guy).
To what extent does removing the seers and ribs mellow them out? Will they be tamed a good bit (which is what I’m looking for)?