I asked my wife to pick me up 1 habanero which will be thrown in a keg for about 3 days. She brought home about 8. I love spicy food but am afraid to cook with habaneros. Anyone have any usage recommendations? Should I always devein and deseed?
They’re not as spicy as I expected when I started cooking with them. I use two in about 2L of chili and it adds a nice zip and great flavor. I can’t make chili without them now. Making salsa is an easy way to experiment with how much habanero you like. I always deseed but have never deveined, so I don’t know how much difference that makes.
Thanks. You read my mind about the salsa.
Another trick is to cut a couple slits in the pepper - just through the flesh on either side - and toss it in whole. I do this sometimes when cooking with them, too. You get the nice flavor and some heat, but not near as much as dicing the whole thing up.
Maybe I will use this method in the beer as well so I don’t have to deal with dicing the little bastards up. Will probably take longer to get to my desired result but also less prep time.
There is a delicious salsa from the Yucatan that has habaneros, citrus juice and onions as the main ingredients. Look one up and put it on some roast pork. Just about the best thing.
Aggressively hot peppers can be used liberally in marinades and rubs for grilling because a lot will fall off. Also, you could soak them in a spirit of your choice and dose cocktails: tequila for margueritas, rum for mojitos etc. If you can’t find a use for all of them they freeze just fine.
They can be dried as well. They retain their flavor and heat for a long, long time.
+1 That is what I do with mine.
Another good idea. I did this with ghost chiles we grew last year. You can then cut a small piece off at a time to add a little heat to something on the fly.
+2. I grow a variety of chiles and pretty much do everything - dry them, freeze them, hot sauces, chili garlic pastes, etc. Love some chiles.
Yes, and when I make hot sauce that gets cooked I now do it outside. The same goes for processing horseradish. We made some extra hot sirachha a couple years ago and we were tearing up, the dog was whining and the cat was meowing.
Ouch ;D My favorite is taking the lid off the blender when I’ve made a batch of fire breathing sauce. It’s like a punch in the face where you cough uncontrollably.
I don’t think I would be as worried about habaneros as I am about using Yellow Hungarians.
We grew yellows one year and used 1/4 of one pepper, seeded and deveined, in a gallon of chili. It was so hot we could barely eat it. We froze the leftovers and my wife had a bowl while I was out of town. After it had time to soak, she actually got physically ill from eating it. We laughed about how clean the silverware was after serving it though.
We never did find a good use for those peppers.
Habaneros were mild compared to that. :o
Paul
What’s the best process for drying them?
Great ideas here. I like the cocktail idea for sure as I use jalapenos and cilantro in a tequila drink that is delish. I think the fist stop will be salsa to get a feel for them. I can add extra of the other ingredients if I go overboard on the hab…
The heat depends on the variety of habaneros. Deveining and deseeding will remove some of the heat. I also heard that lot of the capsaicin is found at the top so you could just use the bottom. A lot of veins can be bitter tasting, but I have never experienced that. My wife uses habaneros a lot in chili, sauces and salsas and they add a great flavor. I use them in beef patties if I don’t have scotch bonnets. If we have extra peppers we usually freeze them, but recently I have been drying them and grinding them into a powder with a coffee grinder. I like having different pepper powders on hand for seasoning. If you have hot habaneros(or any hot pepper), I would recommend wearing gloves. Those oils stick around for a while.
I consistently have issues just handling jalapenos without gloves. I tend to touch or wipe my eye aftereward and it is over…
Ah, yes, and also remember to wash your hands BEFORE you use the restroom!
Haha…good call! I have tried washing my hands multiple times, coating with olive oil but nothing seems to to work…Luckily I haven’t had any of the issues you are referring to…
On that note I’ll share a cautionary tale - I ONCE went to the bathroom after making a blazing bottle of habanero/Thai dragon pepper hot sauce and paid the price. Suffice it to say…well, draw your own conclusions. Not good. 