If you’d like to grow some unusual chiles this summer, Cross Country Nurseries has over 500 varieties of chile peppers, many available as plants.
Some of the more intriguing names:
XIGOLE – very hot Pequin/Piquin Type. from Oaxaca region
ZIA PUEBLO – medium, from New Mexico
TIGER TEETH – very hot, Habanero Elongated Type, from Guyana
TRINIDAD SCORPION – extremely hot, from Trinidad
TOPITO CHEESE – sweet, Cheese/Tomato-Shaped Type, N. Carolina
AFGHAN – hot, from Afghanistan
ANCHO LARGE MEXICAN – mild, Ancho/Poblano Type, from Mexico
AFRICAN PEQUIN – hot, Pequin/Piquin Type, from Africa
DEL DIABLO – very hot; Pequin/Piquin Type, from Oaxaca region
WHITE FIRE HYBRID – hot, Short Wax Type
WIRI WIRI – hot, from Caribbean
Comment:
I found out the painful way that being kind to a growing chili plant by giving it lots of fertilizer can raise the octane (picante) level to unbearable levels. Now I mix in sand, plain-Jane construction sand if I plan to consume the fruit of my labor. The plant will still grow fine. Slower, shorter, and produce slightly fewer chilies. The Mexican varieties grew just fine in pre-Columbian times, in poor soil. I stay away from chilis that have the word “Turbo” stenciled on them.
VINEGAR the stronger the better ANTIDOTE works for me. Wash hands, even use it full strength (then rinse with water) as a mouthwash. I had to do this with Amparo’s chilies piquin a couple of months ago. She roared with laughter after I dashed into the house.
Those do sound like some interesting peppers, the Trinidad Scorpion reminds me of a scotch bonnet with a stinger added.
For anyone looking for flavor and not heat, over at Las Cruces, NM. they developed a pepper which is not any hotter than a bell pepper, but looks and tastes like a jalapeno.
I was answering a question on another forum about why water will not quench or wash away pepper burn, thought I’d share that here. The link below gets a little science nerdy, but the illustration showing how capsaicin exerts its action after it enters into the cell, this is the key point. Because the capsaicin has entered the cell, no amount of washing on the outside of the cell will help to reduce the burn. You pretty much just have to wait for it to run its course.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK11036/box/A1045/?report=objectonly
Interesting article and I almost understood it. So thanks for the basic explanation: that you can’t wash the burn away, because it is not on the surface, but it gets inside the cells in your mouth, or in your skin
I was surprised, but probably shouldn’t have been, to read that over a third of the world eats chile peppers every day.
Thanks for the link