Hot Peppers

Grew her 2019 from seed. She flowered a little late so I took her to my office, where I have a perfect nice south facing office. She produced a ton of peppers. Then I "killed" her (cut her of way down, leaving her no leaves at all) and left her. 2 weeks later she came back. So I started giving her water and nutrients. She grew back and gave (less) peppers in 2020. As I have been on and off in the office (guess we all know why) she wasn't treated as she deserved. At the end of the year, I "killed" her again. She came back again. So I gave her water. I gave her way too little nutrients (I hardly ever was at the office, she was mostly watered by a colleague), I never repotted her. I feel like a monster. She didn't produce peppers. Then suddenly in the fall of 2023 she produced 3 proud little peppers. So, I finally decided to take her back home and just repotted her in a nice, bigger pot and gave her the nutrients and fresh dirt (after 5 years...) she desperatly needed. I am somewhat exited what she will do this year.

The Before:

I used aji lemon drops and 3 yellow habaneros, lemon vinegar, fresh lemon juice, a few sichuan peppercorns, a dash of salt and a little bit of olive oil.

I wanted to make a sauce that was almost as sour as hot and although I didn't quite succeed with that, the result is a great tasting, very sour hot sauce that is just something very different to every other hot sauce I have tried.

To make it more sour I'll probably have to straight up add some citric acid next time😅

I've recently harvested about 5 lbs of habaneros from two plants I was growing. What the hell do I do with so many peppers? I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to give at least half of them away.

A link from the author

another link

I came across this technique for helping pepper seeds germinate. I don't know about anyone else but I have a hard time getting them to germinate and, or they can take a long time and for me living in zone 6, by the time they're in the ground it's borderline late.

What do you think?

I'm open to suggestions!

Ed Currie is actually a mad man.

I’ve been delving into making hot sauces lately, and no matter how much I blend, it comes out more like very finely diced salsa rather than a sauce, with little tiny shreds of everything I put in there. Anyone in the community have any suggestions on how to sauce it up? Also, any suggestions on how to thicken a sauce without making it chunky?

I'll eat hot peppers in any circumstances, but my favourite is to ferment them and pulverize them into sauce. Anyone else do the fermentation route? What are your favourite ingredients, peppers, etc?

I use a lot of different things but my recurrent non-pepper ingredient is leek. It ferments amazingly to create a sweet allium flavour that doesn't overpower the peppers themselves. I also like adding peach or apple for sweetness after the fermentation.

If you have to pick only 1...

Gardener here - currently growing ghosts, scotch bonnets, scorpions, habaneros, and jalapenos.

I dry them and make crushed red pepper from them.

I have Rocoto, Chocolate Habanero, Aji Lemon Drop and Habanada growing in the garden right now, all new varieties to me. The Habanada is struggling a bit (too sunny over the last week), but looks like she'll make it😁