Find the Right Chile Pepper for You

By Cindy Murphy
Published on April 13, 2011
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Mexican hot chili peppers colorful mix habanero poblano serrano jalapeno on wood

Sweet or heat? If you’re like most folks, your choice would be sweet. Sweet peppers traditionally have been America’s preference, and bell peppers top the list. In colors of green, red, purple, and yellow, they are the most common pepper found in grocery store produce departments, farmers’ markets, and backyard gardens. Each day, 24% of Americans consume foods containing either fresh, frozen, dried, or canned bell peppers.

But the bell pepper isn’t the only player on the field. Hot peppers feature prominently in ethnic cuisines such as Indian, Thai, Hungarian, Italian, South American, Mexican, and Mediterranean. They can be eaten fresh, roasted, pickled, stuffed, or used dried. They add flavor to chutneys, curries, stir-fries, soups, stews, salsas, and salads. Once just thought of as “spicy hot,” chiles are now much more appreciated for their subtle nuances of flavor.

Technically, all peppers are chiles (from the Mexican-Spanish chile), but it is typically hot peppers that are associated with the name. Peppers are in the Capsicum genus, and it is the chemical capsaicin that gives them their heat. Capsaicin doesn’t bother birds, but it does discourage most mammals, including humans. But we are a tenacious lot. A little – or in some cases, a lot of – heat couldn’t deter folks for long. Humans, it was discovered long ago, enjoyed having spice in their diet.

Just when did humans begin to play with fire? Archaeologists haven’t pinpointed a specific time when chiles were first cultivated, but by 5,000 B.C., depictions of chile pods adorned ancient pottery and textiles. In Central and South America, chiles were a dietary staple, and each region cultivated different varieties. From the five domesticated species of peppers, thousands of varieties have been developed in a dizzying array of shapes and sizes and in a kaleidoscope of color, ranging in heat from mild to firecracker hot.

Christopher Columbus brought chiles to Europe from the New World in the late 15th century. He mistakenly called them “peppers,” thinking they were related to our familiar table condiment, black pepper (Piper nigrum). The two species are not related, but the name stuck.

Europeans, however, were slow to catch on. Peppers, along with potatoes, eggplant and tomatoes, are part of the Solanaceae (Nightshade) family. Also included in the family are deadly nightshade, mandrake and henbane – all well-known to the early Europeans as poisons. This family link gave peppers a stigma, and they were regarded with deep suspicion.

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