Why jalapeño peppers are less spicy (2023)
dmagazine.com
Why jalapeño peppers are less spicy (2023)
1–10 of 336 posts
Re: Why jalapeño peppers are less spicy (2023)
#2It's interesting how bad incentives are when something with qualitative differences (flavor, heat) is sold by the pound. Making it more palatable expands the market up to a point, but so does requiring more peppers generally.
The most durable countermeasure seems to be totally outside of the purview of economics: building up a culture of caring about the product. Like tomatoes in Italy, or coffee beans among coffee lovers.
For heat we've mostly had to rely on serrano or (when in season here) the Hungarian wax pepper (varies wildly between 1k and 15k scoville)
Re: Why jalapeño peppers are less spicy (2023)
#3The article doesn't contain the actual reason.
I'd argue that the real reason is that peppers are now mass produced in clean, bug-free, environments.
Which means: No bug bites, no spice.
If you grow peppers indoors where no bugs are, they tend to be a very mild produce. If you put them outside (and have enough insects around), they get much more spicy.
Of course the usage of pesticides contributes to that effect, due to bugs not having a chance to bite the fruits anymore.
Re: Why jalapeño peppers are less spicy (2023)
#4I always presumed the heat was from the seeds and not the pepper its self.
Re: Why jalapeño peppers are less spicy (2023)
#5Wow, I was just telling my partner last week that the Jalapeños I'd bought were not spicy and it seemed like it was happening more and more often. I love Jalapeños with cheese and crackers and it sucks to cut up a whole jalapeño only to find I might as well just used a green pepper.
Re: Why jalapeño peppers are less spicy (2023)
#6The article kind of mentions this but I think most professionals have shifted to serranos except when they want the big slices for a garnish or something. The shift was well underway when I was still cooking in the late 2000s, though I mostly heard consistency as the reason rather than heat.
Re: Why jalapeño peppers are less spicy (2023)
#7I always presumed the heat was from the seeds and not the pepper its self.
It's mostly neither, but rather it tends to be concentrated in the 'ribs', that whitish tissue inside the pepper. Seeds tend to have some of that connective tissue on and around them, or to come in contact with it more, and so have a reputation for heat.
Re: Why jalapeño peppers are less spicy (2023)
#8I don’t like more than a little spicy but I discovered that if you stand the jalapeño up and cut vertical panels leaving the core and seeds behind, they are essentially just sweet peppers with a little kick. It seems that almost all of the heat is in the seeds and the plith.
Re: Why jalapeño peppers are less spicy (2023)
#9The article kind of mentions this but I think most professionals have shifted to serranos except when they want the big slices for a garnish or something. The shift was well underway when I was still cooking in the late 2000s, though I mostly heard consistency as the reason rather than heat.
yeah it's always a crap shoot with jalapeños, sometimes they're mild, hot, or like really freaking hot. I love serranos though, dice up a few and throw into a standard chicken and rice casserole recipe. that's really good stuff.
Re: Why jalapeño peppers are less spicy (2023)
#10The article doesn't contain the actual reason. I'd argue that the real reason is that peppers are now mass produced in clean, bug-free, environments. Which means: No bug bites, no spice. If you grow peppers indoors where no bugs are, they tend to be a very mild produce. If you put them outside (and have enough insects around), they get much more spicy. Of course the usage of pesticides contributes to that effect, due…
The summarized version was that they've selected for milder more consistently flavored jalapeños for mass manufacturing purposes where the companies using the peppers in their products prefer to control the level of spice with capsaicin extract.