Pepper Jelly and the Scoville Heat Index

All I did was rinse out the container and the next time I took a bite of cookie my lips were on fire!  Our freezer is filled with chopped hot peppers ready for jelly making and I forgot that Caribbean Red Hot is just plain dangerous. But oh, the jelly makes it worth all the pain. 

   Needless to say, this jelly is a mixture of Caribbean and other hot peppers for fear that straight Caribbean jelly would be a weapon, not a food.  Now this year we have added Naga Jolokia, Ghost Pepper.  Any guesses why they call it ghost pepper? It is a lovely plant, dark green large leaves but there will be no pepper jelly made with this deadly pepper.

   Wilbur Scoville invented a system in the early 1900s to measure the heat index of peppers. New pepper discoveries have caused the list to grow in number, all to be rated against the standard-pure Capsaicin, the substance that makes hot peppers hot, which comes in at 16,000,000 Scoville Units. Ghost peppers register 1,041,000 S.U.  Caribbean Red Hot only registers 400,000. 

  

   We love Jalapeno poppers…sliced lengthwise, deseeded, stuffed with a cream cheese/herb mixture and baked…delicious.  We carefully removed seeds from each half, but the poppers were almost too hot to enjoy. NOW we learn that most of the capsaicin is concentrated in the veins of the peppers and to a lesser degree, in the seeds. Oh well, live and learn. Jalapenos register only 9,000 S.U.

     A friend brought seed for Chile de Arbol saying they were wonderful pan fried.  We asked if they were hot and the answer was just “of course”.  These peppers come in at 30,000.  Think we’ll stick to frying Jimmy Nardello peppers, an heirloom from Italy.  Looks just like a hot, hot pepper…long and twisty but has NO heat and is delicious pan fried or fresh from the garden.  

                                            ...Jimmy Nardello

   When peppers are dried they tend to increase in heat by about 10 times. 
    Think about it and be careful out there!