Dial It Up!
- Details
- Category: September 2019
- Published: 05 September 2019
- Hits: 1429

Chili peppers are a staple of most Mexican food recipes. The sheer popularity of Mexican cuisine and the ever growing Hispanic population in the United States make chili peppers an essential daily ingredient.
Fresh chili peppers are generally available year round. They are grown in California, New Mexico, Texas, and Mexico. Dried chili versions are also available year-round.
California’s extreme summer temperatures are conducive to growing a wide variety of mild to very hot specimens. Cultivated in a full range of sizes, shapes, and degrees of hotness, the number of varieties is impressive.
The head-scratching comes with trying to properly identify the various peppers by name and flavor profile. It gets complicated when the name of a pepper may vary from region to region. The name changes again when the pepper goes from being fresh to being dried.
With a variety of heat levels and flavor profiles, versatility is a key attribute of both fresh and dried chili peppers.
Harvested throughout the summer, some green chili peppers are left on the plants until autumn. They will go from bright green in color to their final hue of yellow, orange, purple or red, depending on the variety.
Fresh chili peppers are generally available year round. They are grown in California, New Mexico, Texas, and Mexico. Dried chili versions are also available year-round.
California’s extreme summer temperatures are conducive to growing a wide variety of mild to very hot specimens. Cultivated in a full range of sizes, shapes, and degrees of hotness, the number of varieties is impressive.
The head-scratching comes with trying to properly identify the various peppers by name and flavor profile. It gets complicated when the name of a pepper may vary from region to region. The name changes again when the pepper goes from being fresh to being dried.
With a variety of heat levels and flavor profiles, versatility is a key attribute of both fresh and dried chili peppers.
Harvested throughout the summer, some green chili peppers are left on the plants until autumn. They will go from bright green in color to their final hue of yellow, orange, purple or red, depending on the variety.
Peppers of the same variety, even those on the same plant, can differ in hotness. A good rule of thumb– the more mature the pepper, the hotter it will be.
By example, a red Anaheim pepper will pack more punch than a green one. Soil, climate, and other conditions also affect the amount of capsaicin in a pepper.
Dried peppers typically don’t have the same name as their fresh counterparts. Nor do they usually carry the same heat level. Dried chilies tend to be more concentrated. Exercise caution when substituting the dried for fresh.
Super-hot chili peppers, like ghost and Carolina reaper, have the same name fresh or dried. A jalapeño pepper that is dried and smoked is called chipotle. An Anaheim pepper is called California chili when it’s dried. A dried Poblano pepper is renamed Ancho chile.
Beyond salsas and sauces, depth of flavor from chili peppers is touching everything from cocktails to desserts.
Char, stuff or pickle, turn up the heat. Bold and interesting chili peppers demand some love and attention.
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