Turbo-1's HOT STUFF

turbo

Nope. But I don't rub my face or eyes after, either. I generally handle the peppers by rinsing them under cold water, removing stems (slicing or otherwise) and chopping them either with knives or a food processor. Once, when I was snapping stems from habaneros, I scraped off the little "skirts" of those stems with my thumbnail. Once was enough.

Math Jeans

I would definately attend your salsa school . It also appears that you saw the link to my hermit crab gallery. I think that for me, at this point salsa is not in my cooking range. I'll work on that relish though.

turbo

The salsa/chili relish stuff really pays off. I'm in the midst of lunch - fresh garden tomato slices on Jewish rye bread with Cain's mayonnaise, salt, pepper, and a 50:50 mix of red tomato salsa and habanero relish. Mmmm! I might have to make another one.

Math Jeans

Turbo, I got so jealous of your food that I ordered seeds and I'm starting a pepper garden. I even got Savannah red habaneros which rate 525,000 Scovilles (almost twice that of home grown regular habaneros). Its gonna have some mild peppers, medium, and 3-4 types of habaneros :D. Do you have any tips on growing them?

Astronuc

Pretty much the same soil that works for tomatoes, works for peppers.

Just apply a little Miracle Grow plant food periodically. Soil should be organic and well drained, but not dry.

turbo

Good for you!

Yes, habaneros grow well in a soil that is not too rich in nitrogen. If you use fertilizer that is heavy in nitrogen, the plants will spend most of their energy putting on extra leaves instead of blossoms and fruits, and the peppers may develop so late that they will not ripen quickly. Peppers love hot temperatures, so if you can grow them in a raised bed or in containers near a south-facing wall (for reflectance) they will thrive. If you can grow them in a hot glassed-in porch or patio, that's OK too. If you're using containers, you'll have to check the soil moisture every day. Containers lose water faster than raised beds or garden spots. Peppers can tolerate fairly dry soil compared to other vegetables, but you can't let the soil get too dry. If the soil is dry to the touch on the surface, but feels a bit moist and sticks to your fingers when you poke your finger in an inch or more, that's probably just about right. For a couple of bucks, you can get a little pH test kit at any good garden shop. A soil pH of 5.5-6.0 less is probably fine, but check the recommendations that come with your seeds - there may be some variation in preferred pH with some of the more exotic peppers. I keep my whole garden spot (~1800 sq ft) a little under pH 6.0 and everything seems to do well.



I have a big batch of red tomato salsa simmering right now - it's got 2 huge white onions, 3 large bell peppers, 3 large habaneros, 9 lipstick chilis, 6 jalapenos, and all the cloves from 2 large bulbs of German garlic. Looks like it will make about 10 pints canned + a little extra for more immediate use. Good luck with your peppers, MJ!

Math Jeans

It is a huge relief that peppers love hot temperatures. I live in Arizona . Unfortunately the crazy hot time of year just passed last week (we were over 110 degrees every day for weeks). I got a book on raising peppers when I got the seeds, so I hope that will help. However, first I'm only going to start with two plants to see if I can even grow anything. One potted on the porch, the other in the ground in the backyard (I wanna test if the soil here works).

Just out of interest, do you have any pure Capsacine in your house, turbo?

Evo

OH NO NO! That's BAD stuff. Seriously.

Math Is Hard

No doubt! DANGER WILL ROBINSON!!!!

Math Jeans

Yup. 10 million Scovilles kicks a punch .

turbo

Evo, MIH, and MJ, I grow all of my heat, and I tend it and blend it into food that we can use neat or combined with other sauces or diluted in other foods. There is no sauce, relish, pickles (most are hot) that cannot be pressed into service at parties and get-togethers, apart from standard warnings. If someone has been told that putting a tiny bit of habanero relish on a cracker with cheese and a pickle might cause them discomfort, I can't feel too much guilt.

Math Jeans

Well, I'm a little bit different. When I have a really spicy dish, I tend to not give warnings and say that the particular food is amazing in large portions. I'm just that kind of guy .

NateTG

You seem like the sort of person that would serve peanut butter filled jalapenos or jabanero ice cream.

turbo

Well hot and sweet are not mutually exclusive. About the only sweet jellies my wife makes (apart from blackberry) are hot pepper jellies made with jalapenos, habaneros, or a blend of both. It goes really well on crackers with cheese, pickles, sardines, smoked oysters, cream cheeses - whatever you have for snacks when company pops in.

turbo

I made up my latest (not last, I fear) batch of red-tomato salsa today. Since our dill got a late start this year, the heads have not gone to seeds, but still feature the tiny yellow florets that are so pungent-tasting compared to the dill weed. I decided that in addition to jacking up the heat with above-normal chili amounts, I'd tweak the overall aroma and taste with these florets, and picked a bunch of dill heads, trimming only the florets for the salsa. I added them first so that the flavor would "lock in" while I was chopping and adding onions, chilies, garlic, and sweet pepper. What a great batch of salsa. There was almost 1/4 of a half-pint jar left as overage after I canned the batch, and we used almost all of it tonight on two cheeseburgers. I marked all the lids before jamming the jars (not much room left - have to start running them down cellar) into what space I could find in the cupboards, so when we have special company for a cookout, we can get out some "premium" cheeseburger salsa. Most of our salsas leave nothing to be desired when served at cookouts, but this batch is special, like that 1966 Inglenook Cabernet Sauvignon that I bought 1/2 case of instead of getting out the checkbook and buying every case in the store. This was back in 1978 and it was going dirt cheap - $3.6? a bottle IIR.

Note to self: plant WAY more dill next year, and plant it in shifts to make the florets coincide with pickle production and the (later) pepper relish and salsa production. Killer stuff. If you are at a farmer's market and see some fresh dill, try to get the flowering heads with the tiny yellow florets instead of the dill weed or seeded heads. Pay extra, if you must. The taste is killer. Pinch and taste a tiny sprig of the weed (leaves) and pinch and taste one floret of a flowering head. You'll thank me. My family always either used the weed and/or the matured seeded heads for pickling/canning, etc. If my French-Canadian great-aunts Gertrude and Isabel were alive, they'd smack me up against the side of the head for saying that in this one case, they didn't have a clue about the best use of this herb. To be fair, they let their crops go to seed and dried them to get seed for the next year's crop, but they should have planted extra to take advantage of the rich, pungent florets.

Edit: I'm thinking that using the florets to make up little batches of herb butter to use on steamed vegetables and on garlic bread, etc, might be a really good idea. If I could stand being around people (fragrance chemicals cripple me), I wouldn't mind doing a little of this stuff at farmer's markets just to see how it would fly. I already know that the hot pepper jellies, the salsas, and the pickles would be a hit, but when you figure the work, the cost of the canning jars, lids, rings, processing, etc, I'd have to charge people $10 for a jar of pickles or salsa to make the numbers work out for a business. That's more than most people would pay, though my neighbor gave me over $30 worth of brand new never-opened canning jars, asking that I just give him a "few" little half-pint jars of habanero relish, like I gave him last year. He's a serious chili-head.

Math Jeans

Well. I finally compiled the ingrediants for the habanero relish. I plan on making some up tonight.

turbo

Please chime in ASAP!!