How is your pepper crop this year?

[glen]

With a little luck, some of those pepper seeds will make it to you and Ron. The ahi's shown are the common sweet ahi's that are grown in my province. The seed was sold by a hardware store to friend of mine who passed on some seed to me. These little sweet peppers are just plain easy to grow. We need sweet peppers in the kitchen and they are getting expensive. Size of the pepper makes no difference to me. I just want dependability and good flavor. The jalepeno's I got from the vivero or nursery. Not many folks eat them. They are hot. I am counting on Ron's Tam jaleno seeds to eventually reach me. That's going to be huge! If they are as sweet as I think they are going to be I will be able to just split em and remove the seeds and webbing inside the pepper and they should be almost totally sweet. I will be able to use em just like sweet peppers. Jalepeno's love the Panamanian climate and soil. They are the easiest of all peppers for me to grow. Plants just get covered over and the plants live a long time. I plan to even let em ripen red and make sweet jalepeno sauce. Thats going to be a hit.

[glen]

My latest hot sauce recipe.

Ingredients-
1 and a half quart bag of mixed red jalepeno's and habenero's.
half onion.
10 garlic cloves.
1 teaspoon tumeric
1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
2 tablespoons lemon juice
2 cups vinegar
half cup water

Cut some red peppers and put them in a pan with some olive oil and bake until you see some burnt places on the pepper. Cut all peppers small enough to throw into blender. Chop up onion and garlic. Start throwing all this in the blender and puree everything. I mean, everything including the vinagar and water and all the listed ingredients. Pour the purreed mixture into a container and leave on the counter top for 4 days. Return this to the stove top in a sauce pan and boil gently for 15 to 20 minutes. Let cool and return to the container. Put in the fridge for a week or so. Then pour this mixture thru a screened sieve and let the juice get strained out. Then pour the juice into sauce bottles.

This sauce will be hot. Now, this depends on how hot your peppers are. Mine are hot. If I had enough jalepeno's I would not have used habenero's but that is just a matter of preference. You can use any type of peppers you want for your hotsauce.

I am not an expert on hot sauce. However, my concoction is much better than anything I can buy in the store here in Panama and well worth the effort.

[heavyhitterokra]

Man!

That sure sounds good!

I can't wait until next Summer or Fall when our peppers come on ... Right now, it's still freezing rain here. A good homemade pepper sauce would be really good about now.

[glen]

Its summer here so I took some foto's of my peppers.  The little peppers are called ahi criollo.  They stand up until they get a little weight on them and then drop downwards.  They ripen red and are super sweet.

[macmex]

Beautiful!

[glen]

The heat has really done a number on the pepper green house.  Production is falling.  Peppers are real heat sensitive.  Once higher temperatures visit the key is just keeping the plants hydrated.  If I can keep these plant alive and healthy, I will begin getting lots of fruit set again later.  That is the plan anyways.  I have several excellent variety's growing now and they are struggling to produce just a few peppers.  Even the jalepeno is struggling and all the blooms are just falling.  That will change later.

[glen]

Oh, the only hot peppers growing in the green house are the jalepeno's. I have heard it say that jalepeno's are not hot. They are supposedly mild. Mine are hot. Not as hot as habenero. No where near. But, my jalepeno's need to be respected or your stomach will not stay in good working order for long. Habenero peppers are sneaky hot. My jalepeno's are just plain hot. No beating around the bush kind of hot. These jalepeno's are awesome. But, hot. This spring, thanx to Ron, I will be growing sweet jalepeno. I plan to use them in the kitchen along with the normal sweet peppers. Can't wait. There really is no other pepper with the complex flavor of jalepeno. Once you start enjoying them its hard to stop. They make the very best hot sauce I have ever tried. And, they grow as well as any pepper that I have ever grown in Panama. Easy peasy.

[zeedman]

Its threads like this that make me acutely aware that I don't live in a warm climate. My peppers are just a gleam in their daddy's eye at the moment, waiting for the Big Thaw.

[macmex]

I have about 10 Chile Rayado seedlings up right now. Today I hope to start the sweet peppers which Glen sent me. It's been years since I've grown a sweet pepper. But I'm looking forward to trying this one. I also need to start my Murupi Amarela and will probably start a couple Frank's Thai Hot and some Tabasco peppers which Kent Goodpasture (Green Country Seed Saver) gave me a couple years ago. The Tabasco peppers are very ornamental and hardy. They are flat out HOT, but really make a fine hot sauce.

Chile Rayado, like Jalepeños can vary in heat. Though, the Rayado is almost always hotter than Jalepeño. A mild Rayado is like a moderately hot Jalepeño. A hot Rayado is on pare with an Habanero, though the heat is not the same. Habaneros and most of the c. chinese peppers have the hot after burn effect. They sneak up on you. Most c. annums, like the Jalepeño, hit you immediately.

Heat levels are affected both by genetics and conditions. Peppers which receive the hottest afternoon conditions and coolest night and early morning temps, are generally hottest. Back in Mexico, the most coveted Rayados were grown near the Gulf Coast, on the eastern slopes of hills, where they would receive the hottest afternoon sun and morning shade. These brought top dollar in the market. Vendors would often mix the high end and low end Rayados, charging just a bit more, per kilo, than what the two purchases really were worth, in hopes that people would pay for the hotter Rayados, receiving some of the lower end ones in their mix. One of our son's friends figured out how to grade the peppers by sight. He would make the vendors so angry, when he would pick through and take the hottest, best Rayados, paying less, and lowering the quality of their mix on the shelf!

I wonder if Rayado is actually a c. annum. I have always treated it as such, when I plant, keeping it away from other c. annums. But the flowers seem just a little different. 



If I believe two peppers are of the same species I isolate them by at least 100', usually 200-300'. So far, I have never had a cross. But then, it's only once every couple years that I grow two of the same species. I know from experience that I can grow Chile Rayado and a c. chinese species pepper, side by side, and not get a cross. Tabasco is a capsicum frutescens, yet another species.

I've heard that there can be intra species crosses. But so far I have never experienced this.

[heavyhitterokra]

It's time to make Sriracha sauce again!

I just picked a bag of red jalapeno peppers today. Here's the recipe I'll be using:

Ripe Jalapeno peppers:

Ingredients for about 1 1/2 cups Sriracha:
1 1/2 lbs of red jalapenos and red serranos, stems removed
4 cloves of garlic, peeled
3 tbsp light brown sugar
1 tbsp Kosher salt
1/3 cup water
1/2 cup of distilled white vinegar (To be added after 3 day fermentation period).

Here is a URL to a step by step, comprehensive, and very easy to follow video on how to prepare it:
allrecipes.com/video/3965/how-to-make-homemade-sriracha-sauce/?internalSource=picture_play&referringId=235276&referringContentType=recipe

[heavyhitterokra]

Wow!

That Sriracha smells good!!! It's only day two. I'll have to wait for the fermentation process to finish before I can go further, but this stuff could be used for air freshener right now. The garlic and hot peppers make the kitchen smell like a really good Mexican restaurant. My Wife makes fun of me for picking up the jar and wafting the aroma.

[macmex]

Sounds really good. I'm going to have to try this recipe!

George

[heavyhitterokra]

I just got more red peppers. I'm making another batch of Sriracha tonight.

What does it mean when the vapor from your sauce takes your breath from 3 feet away?  I might need a volunteer from the audience to taste test this last batch...

[heavyhitterokra]

Today, I'm enjoying some of the Sriracha Sauce that I made back in September. It was definitely worth the effort that I invested in it last Autumn. This stuff really livens up a dish of chicken casserole.

[heavyhitterokra]

I am covered up in peppers this year. I probably over-planted, trying to compensate for last year's shortage ... Like they used to tell me, when I worked in Prison: "Once deprived, now depraved."

I suppose I have become a pepper degenerate.
 These are some unknown variety of jalapeno.  One variety is hot, the other variety is very mild.  I lost the tags in a windstorm one evening and have been playing, "Russian Pepper Roulette" ever since.  Oh, well ... What would life be without its little surprises?

 More jalapenoes ...  These pepper plants are growing and blooming like crazy this year.  These were picked clean, only a few weeks ago.  From the looks of all these new, baby peppers, I ought to have some really good peppa sauce to keep me warm this winter.

 Just more jalapenos ... I also have Chili Rayado, Tabasco, and Bell Peppers, but got too hot, wandering aimlessly about, trying to remember where I planted all of them, so I didn't get photos.

 I went to take photos of my Tabasco Peppers, but got side tracked by this purple pepper blossom from one of Hank's 5 Colored pepper plants.  A camera cannot do this thing justice.  It was such a bright color in the natural light but my camera could not capture that.

 I don't even know if you can eat these things?  They are just too pretty not to plant each year.  Plus, they remind me of my Grandma Fannie; she used to keep one of these growing in her kitchen to set on the table between meals.  Sometimes, in the dead of winter, she'd just sit there and stare at her 5 colored pepper plant.  She had it growing inside a white granite dishpan with a red pinstripe around the rim.  I can see those days as clear as sunshine anytime I look at these little, purple peppers growing somewhere.  To me, that makes it all worthwhile.
(Thanks, Hank, for these peppers).