Cooking with Chilies and Peppers?

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Mylegsbig

Head Chef
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Hey there guys. It's me bigleg. Okay... i always see the most tempting aisle at my local grocery. It is a big display in the veggie section of fresh and dried chilies and peppers. Habaneros, anejo, huge dried multicolored chilies.. I have NO clue how to cook with these, and im the biggest fan of spicy food ever known. Can anyone give me some ideas about recipes to use with these delicious hot chilies? Using pork, chicken breast, or beef, with potatoes, etc.... Especially the fresh hottest peppers.... MMMMMMMMMMMM! Any sauces, or recipes,or ideas using lots of dried chillies or fresh chillies i want them!!!!
 
Can always find lots of stuff on the web.

But one magazine I enjoy is Chile Pepper. Comes out every other month and is a fun magazine, with many recipes regarding hot victuals.

Try chilepepper.com if you want some information.

Hope this helps.
 
Although it is best to grow the peppers yourself you can still get some nice ones at the grocery store.

I say if you see a lots of peppers in one bin it could easily be a sign they are fresh. If you do not see a lot of peppers in a bin it could easily mean they have been on the self for a few days and I do not like to buy them.

If you buy a dried chili you can put them in some boiling water to bring them back to life or you open up the dried chili, remove all the seeds and use a separate coffee grinder that will only grind up chili peppers and use it as a fresh spice.

You can buy a chili and air dry it, oven dry it, or food dehydrator dry it.

Usually the smaller the pepper, the hotter the better. Habaneros and Scotch Bonnets will be like the hottest peppers you can buy. Jalapeno peppers are a classic chili pepper.

One of my favorite sweet peppers is the Sweet Hungarian Wax or it is sometimes called a Yellow Banana pepper. It is great when you need a pepper, but not the size of basic bell pepper.

After removing the stem you can eat the WHOLE pepper. The membrane and seeds will be the hottest part of the pepper though. After cutting up a pepper, 100% make sure that you wash your hands.

Classic pepper dishes are:

Potatoes O'Brien (diced potatoes, diced onion, and peppers)
Try some peppers, onions and sausage.
Add a diced hot pepper or two to some rice-A-Roni.
Add a hot pepper or two to some chili.
Add a hot pepper to your hambuger or meatloaf mix.
Add a hot pepper to an omelette.
Add a hot pepper to a stir fry.

You have loads of ways to use a pepper. To me this is the perfect food.
 
I'm going to find a good potatoes obrien recipe. I see you like Habanero. They are awesome!!! If you can think of a recipe with habanero using chicken breast or beef let me know!
 
One thing Im loving to death was that I roasted a cookie sheet full of jalapenos in my oven, peeld and de membrained them and tossed them in the blender with salt, vinagre and some onion.

Now I have half a tequila bottle filled with really good jalapeno paste that's also really spicy but instead of tasting like hot sauce it tastes like fresh peppers, even though it's been 2 months since I made it. That means it's great for doing thai cooking or other couisines who like the flavor of fresh peppers and it does wonders for my mexican cooking, especially dabbed on top of french bread covered in refried beans and melted cheese (a moyete).
 
Throw a hot pepper on a pizza.

Throw a diced up hot pepper and some grated cheese on a boneless, skinless chicken breast.

Take some ground up chili pepper spice and add it to some Shake and Bake.

Add some ground up chili pepper spice to some breadcrumbs.
 
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Recipes with habs: http://web.foodnetwork.com/food/web/searchResults?searchString=habanero&site=FOOD&searchType=Recipe

I grow my own red sav habs and they are hotter than HECK. I usually make up salsa, pickle them and make my own hot sauce. This year I made hab jelly like a fiend. But they are way too hot to eat more than a little of without being pickled or cooked. They actually blistered my lips and mouth.

I do this a lot, esp. in sumer: I brine some chicken breasts using my hab vinegar and some chopped pickled habs in the brine. I make up a fresh salsa of some type, using small amounts of a fresh hab. Since habs are so fruity-tasting, a fruit salsa is good. I grill the chicken and serve with salsa. Sometimes I serve it with grilled habarnero/cilantro grits.
 
You can also stuff some of these peppers with cream cheese or a meat mixture. Hot and spicy!

Sara
 
Here's a yummy enchilada-type sauce. I used it over corn tortillas filled with crab and shrimp, but it would be just as good over other types of meat, I'm sure. Heck, it'd be good over cheese enchiladas!

Chipolte Cream Sauce
2 large tomatoes
8 medium tomatillos w/ husks and stems removed
2 ancho chiles with stems and seeds removed (dried jalapenos)
1 clove garlic
2 slices onion, 1/4 inch think
3-4 chipolte peppers in adobo sauce
1/4 t toasted cumin seed
1 t salt
2 T evoo
1/2 c sour cream thinned with 2 T milk

Put the tomatoes, tomatillos and ancho chiles in a large saucepan and cover with water. Simmer for 5 minutes and drain, reserving 1 cup cooking water.

Put garlic and one slice onion in a blender. Add the tomatoes, tomatillos, ancho and chipolte chiles, cumin, salt and the 1 c reserved cooking water. Puree and strain into a large bowl.

Heat the oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add the onion slice, blacken, and discard. Add the sauce to the pan and simmer for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Reduce the heat to low and stir in thinned sour cream. Keep warm over low heat until ready to use.

:heart:
Z
 
rub a mix of cracked black pepper and allspice, sea salt, onion and garlic powder on thick pork chops, grill, and top with pickled hot banana pepper rings (or your favorite pickled hot pepper), and a splash of the brine. serve with fried sweet plantains and spanish rice.

voila, buckytom's dirty pork chop platter...
 
ironchef said:
A safe rule to go by when choosing your peppers is the bigger the pepper, the more mild it will be, and vice versa for the smaller a pepper is.

And while we are at it... Peppers turn green to red or yellow as they mature (this is a generalization but it covers a LOT of them) and this means spicy to sweet. If you ever see a red or yellow jalapeno for instance (rare in the US) go ahead and bite into it for a sweet and spicy treat.
 
Here's a recipe I got from Chris Schlesinger's Thrill of the Grill. I've never made it, but it sounds interesting. A Carribbean spinoff of a Fettuccini Alfredo.

Pasta from ****

2 T olive oil
1 yellow onion, small dice
1 red bell pepper, small dice
2 bananas, sliced
¼ c pineapple juice
juice of 3 oranges
4 T lime juice (about 2 limes)
¼ c chopped cilantro
3 – 4 T finely chopped HOT chiles (habanero or Scotch Bonnet)
about ¼ c grated Parmesan cheese
2 t butter
1 # fettuccine, cooked al dente
salt and cracked black pepper to taste

In a large saucepan, heat the oil and sauté the onion and red bell pepper over medium heat for about 4 minutes. Add the bananas, pineapple juice, and orange juice. Simmer over medium heat for 5 minutes, until bananas are soft. Remove from heat, add the lime juice, cilantro, chile peppers, and 3 T of the parmesan cheese; mix well. Add the pasta to the mixture, and the remaining butter. Season to taste with the salt and pepper and garnish with the parmesan cheese.
 
You can always cut the tops off of a bell pepper remove all the seeds and membrane.

And put inside the pepper a mix of Hamburger, rice, egg, and tomato sacue.

Now you have a stuffed pepper.

You can also stuff the stuffed pepper with some hot peppers for a spicy kick.
 
We usually can sweet and spicy peppers towards the end of the year out of our garden.

We take a big batch of peppers (No bells, but I guess you could use them), usually a mix of various hot peppers, whatever we had planted, and cut them into slices.
Fill up the jars and add bread and butter pickle brine.

Seal 'em up, and in about a week they are good to go.
Some jars do get hotter than others, depending on what mix of peppers got put in there... :mrgreen:

John
 
MLB good question. When ever I use peppers, regardless of which ones they are, the yellow or orange bell type, or the spicy ones like pasilla, anaheim (I am somewhat of a wimp with the heat department, habanero I have never tried, its like #10 on a scale of 1-12, scotch bonnets being the hotest, i like level 4-5). Back to the point, I always roast them first, gives a better depth of flavor. You can leave them whole or de-seed and cut into quarters. I usually toss lightly with EVOO and then when they cool to the touch, the skins rub off easily. If I had my BBQ back that would be the perfect place to grill them,
 
norgeskog said:
habanero I have never tried, its like #10 on a scale of 1-12, scotch bonnets being the hotest, i like level 4-5).

Just a quick note, on average habarneros are considered hotter than scotch bonnets by a slight margin. And red savina habs are, in fact, the hottest pepper on the face of the earth. That accounts for my literally blistered mouth. Habarneros and Scotch Bonnets are not the same, but close cousins along, with their milder relative the Datil.

I agree very much with your suggestion of roasting most peppers, although roasting IMO takes away much of the wonderful fruity, tropical taste of habs and scotch bonnets.



Here's More:



Varieties

The basic varieties of the chinense species are as follows. (To put the heat scale in perspective, ratings of a jalapeño range from 3,000 to 8,000 Scoville Units.)
  • Orange habaneros are perhaps the most common and are originally from the Yucatán Peninsula. They are grown commercially in California and Texas, and in home gardens all over the country. They typically measure 80,000 to 200,000 Scoville Units.
  • Red habaneros are grown commercially in Costa Rica and California. The 'Red Savina' variety from GNS Spices, Inc. is the first member of the species to be awarded a Plant Variety Protection permit from the USDA. 'Red Savina' is also the hottest pepper ever tested, at 577,000 Scoville Units.
  • Datil peppers are a somewhat milder variety with elongated pods that is grown around St. Augustine, Florida. We estimate their heat to be around 40,000 Scoville Units.
  • Scotch bonnets are the typical, tam-shaped chiles of the Caribbean. They are also called booney peppers, bonney peppers, and goat peppers on various islands. They are usually red or yellow at maturity. They are about 100,000 Scoville Units.
 
Okay i said screw it, and i bought some of these. I have three different types, i think chipotles, and 2 other dried ones, they are pretty small, like 3 inches long....i know they are hot dried peppers, none of them were the bigger milder ones, they are maybe one inch wide, im just goin to make a sauce with them... so the dried peppers how do i prepare them for a sauce? just take out the seeds, stem, and then how do i roast them up? Like in a skillet......
 
Okay i'll be more specific real quick. I have one little bag of them, maybe about 15 peppers in all, three diff kinds. I want to roast them to make a sauce to cover a chicken and rice dish. So like i throw them in the skillet to cook, but which ingredients do i add along with them to make a sauce? How can i tell when they are done?
 

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