Stupid question about Hot peppers, Heat vs taste.

[larry_stewart]

When a recipe calls for a hot pepper ( something really on the hot side, not mild), my question is, does a really hot pepper add just heat , or is there a taste element in there also?. When I eat something really hot, the taste ( to me) is over powered. If making a dish that requires a hot pepper, but someone who is going to eat it ( my wife) doesnt like heat, would it make sense to substitute a similar amount of green pepper, to get a slight peppery taste ( without the heat) or is it not necessary, and should it just be left out all together ?

Just curious,

Larry

 

[dragnlaw]

Larry, Excellent question! and you will get as many answers as there are cooks in the world.

Personally,, I like heat but I also like to taste the rest of the ingredients.
I cannot for the life of me tell the difference between the peppers other than how much the burn.
I read all the time how some can taste the 'fruitiness', the 'sweetness', the 'this' or the 'that' in all the different peppers (please! no offence pepper!) but I cannot!

So my take on your question is: a slight peppery taste, which you could achieve with "white pepper" or a mix of peppercorns but not be "hot". Try it and see what she says! She might like something like that. For your own tastes, take a bit of sauce, add your hots and then mix it into your dish after.

 

[larry_stewart]

I kinda feel the same way. I get the different degrees of heat, but to me the heat masks the flavor.

 

[Marlingardener]

I agree! If you want to taste the dish, lay off the hot peppers. There is a list of peppers and their heat index. I pity the poor person who had to compile that list.

Peppers Ranked by Scoville Heat Units | TitleMax

What are the hottest peppers in the world, and which are the mildest? We ranked 110 different types of peppers to find the hottest ones on the Scoville heat scale. While some peppers are considered to be sweet, with a Scoville Heat Units (SHU) measurement of 0, others have reached more than 2...

www.titlemax.com

(disclaimer: I don't even eat jalapenos!)

 

[dragnlaw]

I once saw a couple of episodes of a show that would bring in a guest, 'usually' someone in the culinary world, and see what they thought of various peppers. Man! could these guys eat hot! Don't remember what the show was called. Think they did blind tests and identify the various ones. I'm not talking poblano's or jalapeno's here. I think they would start with Reapers and all in the high end categories.
Ouch.

ps, I like jalapenos, poblanos, and can even put in one bird's eye - membrane and seeds out plus finely diced into a concoction serving at least 8 - LOL
I also like pepperoncini 's in a salad or something like that.

 

[Roll_Bones]

I think of hot sauce. Tabasco is hot with no flavor and Franks has some heat and lots of flavor.

 

[blissful]

I prefer a 'little' hot while mr bliss prefers close to 'not hot' so I usually use hot peppers on the side or hot sauce. Right now I have a hot sauce made of vinegar, salt, and dehydrated serrano peppers (flesh seeds and all). It is about as hot as I can take it. Very warm and only used in small amounts for me (a tablespoon for a whole serving).

I like the sweetness of bell peppers. I notice the red and yellow peppers are much sweeter and less green tasting than green ones. We use bell peppers in most of our bean recipes and our stir fry recipes. I even add them to veggie rice w/onions and peas.

I've wanted to grill large slices of poblanos and bell peppers to skin them and use them in sandwiches for the sweetness and moistness.

In the fall I chop all our colored peppers and freeze them in bags. Through winter and spring, I use about 10 of the gallon zip lock bags pressed flat (2 inches) in our cooking. We get fresh peppers when they go on sale or if they are in the reduced produce baskets in the off-season. We'll grow red and yellow bell peppers and serranos again this summer.

 

[pepperhead212]

I only grow one of those superhots every season, just to see how they compare to the others I've tried, but they don't go into my food or digestive system! Some of the milder habaneros (but still far too hot for most people) have much better flavor, and one that I grow - aji dulce - has allowed those who can't tolerate heat taste dishes with habaneros, since they are chinense peppers (the same species all the superhots and habaneros are), and has the same flavor of the best habaneros (some milder habaneros, like scotch bonnets, lack much of the sweet flavor), but is barely hot at all - about as hot as pepperoncini. I often use a chocolate habanero and aji dulce , to cut the heat in half, and all aji dulce, when making a dish for those who can't take the heat at all.

The peppers I use most are Thai Vesuvius - a 2-3" pepper, that can be used green, ripe, and dried, and the dried ones can be used in Thai, Chinese, Korean, Indian, or Mexican (in place of chile de árbol), and they have a better flavor than most of the peppers you'll find in those stores. And grinding it to a powder (outside!) makes a much better tasting cayenne pepper.

And a pepper I grow every year, that I only use fresh, is Hanoi Market - and orange-ripe pepper, around 20-40k, that has a unique flavor, like the Bulgarian Carrot, but milder. I've tried a number of other orange peppers, but none were the same, so I have to grow them, and save seeds, when I need them.

I have never been fond of hot sauce, as much as I love peppers, mainly because I'm not crazy about dousing most things with vinegar. However, other things I always keep on hand are salsa negra (Rick Bayless's version, using moritas), Nam Pla Prik (chili infused fish sauce), and Nam Prik Pao, the simplified version, with just garlic, shallots, and chili peppers, caramelized in oil. The original recipe had Thai peppers, but it was too hot to use a good amount of, so I had to experiment until I found a good variety.

 

[cookiecrafter]

Many peppers simply become very intensely bitter when cooked. Bitter foods are often meal preferences during January but enjoyed year round. If the restaurant asks you to sign a waiver when ordering hot peppers, what's the risk?

 

[taxlady]

Yes, hot peppers have unique flavours, some more, other less. There are some mild or completely heatless versions of some hot peppers, like habanadas, which are like habaneros but the heat is "nada". I would not just use green Bell peppers. That green flavour is really not what you are looking for. What you should substitute for a hot pepper will depend on which hot pepper. I like the heat, but there are some hot peppers that have bitter flavours and I really dislike those. I can even smell that flavour. BTW, often when we use habaneros or Scotch bonnets, we use only 1/4 or 1/8 of a pepper, without the seeds. They freeze well.

 

[pepperhead212]

Habanadas have no heat, but they also have little of the habanero flavor that the better ones have. A couple of others I've grown have had better flavor, but little production, until the aji dulce, which had great flavor, and only one plant produced more than I needed to dry and freeze for 2 years, plus more to give away!

I have also found some very bitter peppers; some only when green, or purple, when unripe. The Maui Purple and Rooster's Spur were two that were very bitter, even when ripe, and I only used them dried. The best peppers can be used unripe, ripe, or dried, though some are best for certain things.

 

[Jade Emperor]

I’m very much not a fan of “competition” hot sauce people. I remember when a dedicated ring burner eater brought in a tiny vial of some such sauce which had a tiny tiny spoon attached and warning signs all over the label. He dared me to try it and I flat out refused - I don’t do kamikaze food at all and I have never understood the one up-manship surrounding competition hot sauce eaters.

 

[dragnlaw]

I certainly agree with you Jade, that being said, I believe that many just happen to like the flavours.

I personally like a bit of hot. But as I've stated many times - I also like to be able to taste the food that accompanies it. I do not have a palate that can distinguish the nuances of them, I admire pepperhead's abilities and quite a few of the members can as well.

I like a tiny bit of chili oil in my WonTon soups, Harrissa with some stir fry, simple things like that. Do you enjoy an tiny bit of heat with different foods Jade?

BTW, can't remember if I welcomed you to DC, so...

Hi there! and Welcome to DC Jade Emperor!

 

[Jade Emperor]

Thanks Dragn - I love reading your posts. Very informative and yet sometimes asking questions for others to helpfully answer!
Yes, I absolutely adore heat in dishes and can go quite hot when it’s appropriate for the dish. I know a person who has a little plastic bottle on his keychain (sold by Rooster sriracha brand) and he carries very volcanic hot sauce everywhere he goes. I have seen him take it out at dinner parties and douse the meal with it before even trying the meal the way the host had served it. I think that was quite rude TBH.
My focus in my cuisine is authentic Asian dishes so I work with all kinds of different hot ingredients, but I always try to keep it appropriate for whatever I am cooking.
Great thread topic here, and thanks for welcoming me so warmly

 

[taxlady]

Talking about competitive hot sauce/hot pepper eating reminds me of a job I had back in the first half of the 1990s. It was a small office of people who solicited donations/memberships for Vermont Public Television, by phone. One of my co-workers, Handel, was from Guyana and he made a wonderful, very hot, hot sauce.

The folks working there had a party with a potluck for some holiday. One young man brought some hot chicken wings that he had made. The young man had a competitive demeanor and a look of challenge on his face when he put his chicken wings on the table. Handel and I looked at each other and knew that we were both thinking that those wings would be inedibly hot. Handel nudged me and said to try them and see if they were as hot as we figured they were. I took one and tasted a tiny bit. Yup, they were way too hot. I told Handel and then convinced him to try a tiny bit of that one wing I had taken. If the man from the Caribbean (Guyana is part of the Caribbean), who makes a fiery hot sauce, thinks your chicken wings are too hot, then you can be very sure that those wings are too hot.

 

[Jade Emperor]

So sad to ruin what could have been a big hit for the guests, just for stupid kudos on being too hot to eat.

 

[fmw]

I think the peppers themselves have little taste actually. The differences are really the level of capsasin. What you put with the peppers is what the taste is all about. An avocado salsa, for instance, tastes a lot different than a tomato salsa.

 

[Texmex]

If you're talking about chili peppers, some are just heat and don't really taste good or you can't taste them except for the heat.

A usually mild (because their heat varies depending on conditions grown) very flavorful pepper is the poblano. It must be roasted to char the exterior and then the char removed just with your fingers and not with water. Because if you don't get that outer layer off it will have a little bitterness that is not pleasant. It's delicious in a cheese sauce or in different casseroles.

The jalapeno pepper his flavorful and their heat varies from mild to hot. When I grew them on my AeroGarden, I had read chat on that website that they were too hot, and they were correct. For me they weren't even usable. That's because they were constantly in water and that makes them hotter. Usually they're more of a dry area produce.

I'm in Texas and a lot of restaurants here at least the better ones will use a serrano. It's flavorful and the heat is just about right for me. But I wouldn't say the flavor is as pronounced as a jalapeno but that is fine with me.

I'm not interested in the hot hot peppers.

As far as green bell peppers go, I don't particularly like them and they taste kind of bitter to me and kind of upset my stomach, so what I've been doing is buying the Knicks bag of small red yellow and orange peppers you can get at any grocery store now and then I stick those in the freezer and have them for when a recipe calls for bell pepper.

There are some good hot peppers in jars.. Of course pimento is very mild, but it is very flavorful and delicious. I want you alive I sometimes cook with both pepperoncino and banana peppers in jars. My favorite pot roast which is been around the internet for years is Mississippi pot roast and it uses pepperoncino. And then a favorite chicken recipe of mine which is Rachael Ray's Hot Pepper Brick Chicken, uses sliced banana peppers.

I had one recipe that called for Jarred cherry peppers. And now calabrian chilis are trending and I have only ever had them on a sandwich at Panera and I liked it.

Chilis are definitely something to explore. Pretty much all my favorite food has them in it! But there are a lot of people who seem to just go for the heat and that is not me. I don't even like pepper jack cheese.