With dozens of varieties and a broad range of colors and flavors of chili peppers, sometimes even the master gardener or chef needs help picking out peppers. They range from gentle on the tongue to a potential mouth-burning hazard, and learning identify the safe from the scalding would be to your culinary advantage. Here are some tips to pick choice chili peppers.
Instructions
1. Tabasco peppers are the main ingredient of the popular spicy condiment---Tabasco sauce.
Look at the shape of the chili pepper. Wide and round shapes like the green and orange bell pepper are mild to the taste, while longer and thinner peppers like the common tabasco pepper and brick red tien tsin peppers taste much hotter.
2. Note the coloring of the peppers. While peppers can range in color from deep jungle green to construction orange to fire red, many species limit themselves to a certain color set. For example, jalapeno peppers are dark green to red, pepperonchi peppers are yellow-green and cayenne peppers are a deep red hue.
3. It is best to wear protective gloves when preparing habanero peppers.
Tasting certain peppers can determine for you what kind they are. Biting into a red bell pepper will be as spicy as biting into an apple, while chewing on a habanero pepper may make you tear up from the searing heat. Be very careful when tasting unusual peppers---as with several species, the smaller peppers can be the most spicy.
Tags: bell pepper, chili peppers