Ready to grow the most popular extra-hot chili? Combining big heat and a delicious fruity flavor, the habanero pepper has built up quite the spicy reputation in the kitchen. And for those with a green thumb, growing habaneros is the perfect way to keep a continuous …
The grim reaper on the label should tell you enough. Pepper Palace’s Reaper BBQ Sauce, featuring the infamously scorching Carolina Reaper pepper, is a taste bud land mine. Yet, thankfully this isn’t a story of all heat and no flavor. There’s just enough tomato sweetness and peppery spice to make things interesting before the Reaper has its way. Let’s break down this super-hot BBQ sauce.
We’ll be honest, at first we weren’t really sure how we felt about Black Rose Hot Sauce. It has a vinegary tang like Tabasco, but as a Louisiana style dashing sauce it’s way too thick. That thickness is a lot like Sriracha, but the pronounced vinegar tang limits its uses compared to Sriracha. On our first few tastes, we were left with the feeling that this hot sauce was in a hard-to-place limbo zone between two popular flavors.
But Black Rose Hot Sauce has grown on us big time since our initial first impression. In fact, it has a flavor all its own, taking the best of those two popular hot sauces and mixing in a hint smoke and a delicious amount of grit.
Check your willingness to explore the edge of super-hot if you pick up a bottle of Pepper Palace’s tomato-based Time’s Up Reaper Hot Sauce. While not as hot as some inferno-level hot sauces, it punches and hard from the first taste. But unlike many of those extreme sauces that lean into the heat and away from taste, there’s a real flavor in Time’s Up – a garden-y tomato base with garlic and onion undertones, perfect for wings, eggs, and much more. That is, as long as you can take the heat.
When you pick up a bottle of Pepper Palace Ghost Pepper Sauce, expect a sauce that sticks around. Not on your shelf – we’re sure you’ll find as many uses for it as we did – but on the palate. That ghost pepper heat lingers, and with it a smoky sweet tang that’s as good on eggs as it is on steaks. Though, you may be surprised – the heat here is not as hot as you may expect for something labeled with the name of a super-hot chili.
If you’re aiming for authentic Ethiopian cuisine, getting to know berbere spice mix is a critical first step. It’s a blend that’s used for everything from a steak and chicken rub to a finishing season for vegetables and dips. The heat is mild – delivered from chili powder (a spice mix itself) and paprika.
This berbere spice mix recipe is quick to make, using pre-ground spices many of which are common to a well-stocked spice rack. For an even better flavor, try toasting fresh whole spices instead, then crushing them using a mortar and pestle.
Few cuisines are more reliant on a single ingredient, from mole sauces to relleños. But Mexican chilies have even more range than you may know. These are some of the most versatile chilies around, with a lot of flavor nuance and a very eatable heat. We round up seven Mexican peppers below that’ll both change your appreciation of the regional cuisine and open new opportunities in your kitchen.
Few hot sauces have the impact of Tabasco. It’s everywhere these days, so much so that it’s often available at restaurants right next to the other spice and condiment mainstays like salt, pepper, ketchup, and mustard. But do you know what makes this hot sauce …
This particular species is the least widespread, as well as the least cultivated, of the Capsicum varieties. Literally translated, “Pubescens” means “hairy”, and these plants can be fairly easily identified by their characteristic black seeds and hairy leaves. Another distinctive trait of this species is the blue-violet color of the flowers’ petals. Most often, these flowers grow singly or in pairs, but in rare instances they may grow in clusters of four. As the pods ripen, they become yellow or red and typically grow to the size of a small apple.
But – perhaps most of all – the chilies of Capsicum Pubescens set themselves apart from other hot peppers with they’re meatiness and juiciness. It’s a totally unique eating experience when compared to other peppers, more akin to eating a tomato than a jalapeño.
Of the five domesticated Capsicum species, Frutescens is one of the easiest to identify. This particular species shows very little variation in the appearance of the pods, which are often produced in clusters.
Typically, the pods are small and tend to have an ellipsoid-conical shape. Frutescens plants are compact with short stubby growth and a large number of flowers, making them an ideal choice for container gardening.
Most often, the stem of this species grows straight up throughout the plant, curving suddenly just before reaching the flower head.
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