Get to know your Peppers!
Chile Peppers have been cultivated all over the world for centuries. There’s a wide variety of species so they come in different colors, shapes, flavors, and of course, spiciness.
Chile Peppers are included in every kind of salsas, soups, salads, and some of them are even the main ingredient in well-known dishes across the world, like famous Chiles Rellenos or Chiles en Nogada, a classic from Mexican cuisine.
Read more about peppers and discover which is the one that suits your mood here:
1. Chile Poblano
Poblanos are good and easy-to-find grilling peppers that are ideal for stuffing with meat, chicken, veggies and prepare Chiles Rellenos.
Poblano peppers are sold fresh and their skin is too easy to blister and peel. They’re not as spicy as other chile peppers. First, their color is dark green but when they get mature, their change to red. Poblanos are called Chile Ancho when they reach a maturity stage and get dried.
2. Jalapeño
This is the best well-known pepper across the globe and gets its name from Xalapa, the capital of Veracruz, a state in Mexico’s country. Jalapeño is spicy but easy to seed and devein. It’s famous because you can eat them with a burger, or a sandwich, but also, stuffed with cream cheese, bacon, or deep-fried as a bar snack.
Mexicans love jalapeños. They’re not afraid of the spiciness of Chile Peppers.
3. Chilaca
Chilaca pepper is versatile so it’s used for sauces, roasting, and grilling because it has a medium hot flavor.
This Chile Pepper is a Mexican variety that matures from dark green to dark chocolate brown. When Chilacas get dried, they are called chile pasilla and are commonly used in mole recipes.
4. Chipotle
Chipotle has a distinctive smoky flavor and comes from the nahuatl world chilpoctli (smoked chile) and can be found as an ingredient not only of Mexican food, also, Tex-Mex, and southwestern dishes. Chipotles are often a key ingredient in Mexican cuisine and are a smoke-dried jalapeño with a heat similar to the guajillo and the famous Tabasco sauce.
Chipotles are purchases in numerous forms: chipotle powder, chipotles en adobo that comes in a can, and they can be mixed with mayonnaise to create a creamy chipotle mayo that’s ideal for a sandwich or tacos.
In Mexico, chipotles are combined with other spices to create the famous adobo sauce. They’re easily added to beans, tortilla or lentil soups.
5. Serrano
This Chile Pepper is a small Mexican pepper with thick, juicy walls, ideal to prepare salsa verde, and is widely available and versatile. Serrano is most commonly sold in its green stage, it turns red and then yellow as it gets older, and it is spicier than the jalapeño.
6. Habanero
Probably the spiciest one, Habanero comes from Central America and from the Caribbean. Habaneros add a lot of heat to cooking and you should try them judiciously.
Habaneros come in different colors, red, yellow, green and even brown. They’re famous in Mexican cuisine. Habaneros are also the side of some Yucatán dishes such as panuchos, papadzules and juicy cochinita pibil (a dish made of tender shredded pork meat).
Would you try one Habanero?
7. Pimento
This pepper comes from Galicia, Spain and it is eaten as a simple tapa, tossed with salt and fried in olive oil. Pimento is a pepper that’s eaten whole, bitten right off the steam but it gets hotter as it matures.
Now that you know more about Chile Peppers, would you try some?
Don’t be afraid of feeling their heat, they would be great to prepare delicious sauces or this tasty Bell Pepper Pico de Gallo to eat with your favorite José Olé Taquitos, Burritos or Chimis, just get creative and choose the one that suits your mood!
