Pepper Update
July 9th, 2008 - 8:21 am
Apparently the only thing that was hot at all about that jalapeño last night was the seeds and membranes I had handled.
I gave it to Lin. He took a big bite of the cleaned and processed pepper. I winced and waited for him to start getting red in the face or reaching frantically for the glass of milk, and none of that happened. He then told me to take a bite. I determined I could trust him when he said it wasn’t hot, because surely he wouldn’t allow me to take a bite of a pepper that was really, really hot. So I took a tiny little bite, cringing while I did so.
Nothing. No heat at all. It was so “mild” it tasted just like a bell pepper. In fact, that bell pepper we had a few weeks ago was far, far hotter than the jalapeño.
It had a great flavor though! I do hope we get some more of them. With the next one, I will try removing only the seeds and leaving some of the membrane, so it will have some heat. I mostly planted those for Lin, and he was a little disappointed with its complete lack of anything resembling heat. 
2 Responses to “Pepper Update”
Wonderful thing about jalapenos, is most of the capsaicin is contained on and in the seeds. get rid of them and you lose most of the heat. PLEASE NOTE. This technique does not work well for habeneros!
The last time I handled fresh jalapeños, I cleaned out all the seeds and stuff, and they still had a bit of tang to them. This one just had NO tang at all. I was a little surprised.
Maybe it was because I left it on until it started turning red. I don’t know much about growing these things or cooking with them. I’m not too big on the hot peppers anymore.