grew up with was the green bell pepper. Never the belle of the produce section, it nevertheless had its fans. All that has changed, however, as in the last two decades peppers have been transformed. Americans have fallen in love with peppers. Chili peppers receive the most press and are considered the “sexiest” (they even have their own society), but one look at any supermarket produce section reveals many more flashy sweet peppers than chilies. Since we grew up with only green sweet bell peppers, why, suddenly, can we choose from red, orange, brown, ivory, yellow, and even purple ones? What are these colorful peppers, and where they all come from anyway?
You’re going to have to bear with me here because the answer is a bit involved. First, the easy part. The great majority of green peppers are simply unripe peppers that would turn red if allowed to ripen. Most brown, ivory, lavender, and purple ones, too, are just different varieties of bell peppers, are also unripe, and would eventually ripen to red. Now the tricky part. Some yellow and orange peppers begin as green and turn to yellow or orange when ripe; others ripen to red. However, others start out as yellow or orange and keep their original color when ripe.
As to where they came from, for eons the red ones were but a ripening away from your kitchen. Historically, we Americans have been fairly undemanding about vegetables, and when farmers offered only the green, because they were more efficient to produce and ship, we didn’t clamor for other colors. In other parts of the world, especially in Eastern Europe and Italy, they’ve enjoyed red, orange, yellow, and ivory peppers for ages. (As an aside, Europeans favor elongated sweet pepper varieties over blocky ones.) Some of the new colors, especially the orange, ivory, and lavender ones, are modern hybrids bred to capitalize on the new interest in bell peppers.
Certainly this chameleon aspect of peppers is interesting, but for the cook it has further ramifications. An unripe green or purple bell has a strong pepper taste and is somewhat sour. In contrast, a ripe red pepper has a rich, more complex pepper flavor and a mellow sweetness. Wendy Krupnick, one-time garden manager of Shepherd’s Garden Seeds, said it best: “Unripe bell peppers taste like a vegetable; ripe ones taste more like a fruit.” And as any nutritionist knows, ripe peppers have more vitamins as well.
[terminology]
A note about terminology. The word chili, used alone, can refer to the wonderfully tasty and spicy dish made with hot peppers and tomatoes. However, the word chili is also used to refer to peppers. The spelling of the word denoting the pepper depends on a number of factors; it may be variously written chili, chile, or chilli, as in chili peppers, chile peppers, chilies, or chiles. All are correct, as they are common names derived from various locales. For the purposes of this book, I chose to use the terms chili and chilies.
To experience the color shift as they mature, we laid out three different color stages of peppers, from unripe on the left, to ripest on the right. ‘Cal Wonder’ and ‘Gypsy’ are in the top row; a purple ornamental, ‘Yellow Cayenne,’ and ‘Early Jalapeño’ are in the middle row; and ‘Sweet Banana’ and ‘Golden Bells’ are on the bottom.
Blocky bell peppers are the most popular sweet peppers in America. Some of the red and yellow bells have been around for many years, but the lilac, white, and orange bells have been bred in the last few decades.
Hot Peppers
The hotness of hot peppers comes primarily from capsaicin, a pungent and irritating phenol. This chemical is located in the chili pepper’s placental tissue, which is found in the light-colored veins on the walls of the pepper and around the seeds. Until fairly recently, the average American gardener ignored chili peppers, so our plant breeders and seed people did not give them much attention. Consequently, most of these fiery cousins are less domesticated than the sweet bell pepper.
While there is an expanding collection of selected chilies, and even a few hybrid jalapeños and poblanos, the less-domesticated chilies differ from bell peppers in a number of ways. The less-domesticated ones are often slower to germinate, and some grow more slowly. A few need very warm weather. Others are more disease resistant than most bells. Chili plants are generally taller, more open, and rangier than bells. Some varieties hold their fruits on top of the leaves in a decorative way, but most produce fruits that hang down. Certainly among the most beautiful vegetables, chili pepper fruits can be large or small, and round or elongated. Unripe, they can be green, black, yellow, orange, white, or purple. Like their bell cousins, they ripen through a range of colors including orange, or even brown, but most become red. Chili peppers range in hotness from mild to scorching.
Whenever I talk with gardeners and chefs about chilies, the conversation eventually turns to their heat. And the question always arises, What makes the same pepper variety fiery hot one time but mild another? Most of us have planted the same variety and had it come up mild one year but quite hot the next. In discussing this inconsistency with seed people, I learned that there can be different reasons for the variation. Most agreed that the main reason was climatic differences. A somewhat mild chili pepper, for example, might get hotter than usual if grown under the stress of hot and dry conditions. A large difference, however, would be very unusual. A jalapeño might be milder one year than another, or milder in a wet climate than a dry one, but it would still be quite hot, and a mild chili such as an ancho will never be extremely hot.
Another factor affecting the hotness of chilies involves different strains, or subtypes, of the same variety. All jalapeños are not created equal. A generic jalapeño from the nursery, or ordered from a seed company, can vary widely depending on which strain is offered. (For a discussion of varieties and why they vary, see page 41 in “The Pepper Garden Encyclopedia.”)
Putting aside the above minor variations, what everyone really wants to know is, Which variety is the hottest? A number of tests have been used over the years to determine how hot a pepper is, the oldest being the Scoville Organoleptic Test, in use since 1912 (see page 9 for more information on the Scoville test). Recently the Official Chile Heat Scale has become popular, which rates chilies on a 0 to 10 scale with bell peppers as 0 and habañeros at 10; jalapeños rate 5, cayennes 8, and chiltepíns 9. Craig Dremann has created his own hotness scale, based on his testing, which he includes in his Redwood City Seed catalog to help you choose your peppers.
‘Large Thick Red Cayenne’ is one of many types of cayennes and is very hot.
Throughout much of the American Southwest, wreaths and ristras of chili peppers are hung on doors and from house eaves to signify prosperity.
The aforementioned scales are all based on human perceptions of heat and are all helpful but obviously subjective. More uniform, objective testing has been done at New Mexico State University using a high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) machine. Instead of human perceptions, it records the quantifiable amount of numerous capsaicinoids in an individual pepper. While we think of just one chemical as responsible for the heat, in fact, any one hot pepper contains a number of related capsaicinoids, each with its own characteristics. Some sting instantly, while others take time to bite and build slowly. Some affect the tongue, while others burn the back of the mouth. Their flavors differ as well. Some are described as fruity, while others are musky or smoky. The HPLC machine can quantify the chemicals in only one pepper at a time, and because peppers differ from season to season and plant to plant, it really just gives us a ballpark number. Of course,
