by thefilmore on 2/26/24, 9:50 PM with 319 comments
by tptacek on 2/26/24, 10:24 PM
There are second-order effects, like drip irrigation and cultivation techniques that optimize for shape, size, and color over heat --- but those are enabled by the industrial jalapeno's new position in the production chain. The peppers just aren't the point where the heat is introduced anymore; that happens later. Might as well optimize for good looking peppers.
This seems fine? Peppers are one of the easier and more forgiving things to grow yourself. Just grow your own or buy from a farmer's market.
Moments later, after reading the thread
This kind of stuff really seems to piss people off, but when you think about the disempowerment of the jalapeno, try to keep in mind that the same industrial processes have performed unalloyed positive things. Have you noticed that you're way more into brussels sprouts now than you were when you were a kid? If you're a GenX-er or a Millenial, that's because today's (delicious) sprouts aren't the same plant as the (gross) sprouts of yore. Same deal with broccolini, which hadn't even been invented until after your birthday (for most of you).
by simonsarris on 2/26/24, 10:18 PM
The most durable countermeasure seems to be totally outside of the purview of economics: building up a culture of caring about the product. Like tomatoes in Italy, or coffee beans among coffee lovers.
For heat we've mostly had to rely on serrano or (when in season here) the Hungarian wax pepper (varies wildly between 1k and 15k scoville)
by loud_cloud on 2/27/24, 1:41 AM
> Taste Bud Density: Children have more taste buds than adults, and these are more sensitive. This heightened sensitivity can make certain flavors, especially bitter ones, more intense for children. The number of taste buds decreases as people age, which can lead to changes in taste sensitivity and preferences.
by dekhn on 2/26/24, 10:39 PM
The chipotles I get are plenty spicy- 3 small chipotles is enough heat for an almost uncomfortably spicy salsa (in this case, I'm talking about a salsa is made just from the chipotle flesh and some spices and water). If it wasn't spicy enough, I'd add arbol chiles (just one) which are painfully spicy.
by sudden_dystopia on 2/26/24, 10:22 PM
by voidwtf on 2/26/24, 10:19 PM
by LASR on 2/27/24, 12:03 AM
Only recently, I discovered its actual reputation is to pack a punch.
I grew up with Thai chillies as to mean “the chilli”. I still put this stuff on anything that needs some chillies. And that really does pack a punch.
by JumpCrisscross on 2/26/24, 10:32 PM
There are a lot of jalapeño varieties [1]. Ripe Biker Billies are about as hot as cayenne [2].
Looks like one can buy Mitla seeds on Amazon [3].
by fy20 on 2/27/24, 2:03 AM
TL;DW;
- Almost all commercially grown crops are from hybrids, which means two varieties bred to produce a new variety with the selected characteristics of both.
- The characteristics that are chosen are those which are most commercially viable: long shelf life, visually appealing, size uniformity - these are often at the detrement of other characteristics such as flavor, nutrients or in this case heat
- Hybrid plants usually do not 'remain true', meaning their offspring will not have the same characteristics. This means farmers need to buy new seed each year to maintain the same characteristics. This results in hybrid seeds being very valuable - some are worth 10x more per kg than gold.
- Hybrids seeds are produced by pollinating plants by hand. This is a time consuming process, and usually done in low income countries. That means labour laws are often ignored, and child labour is a big problem.
by easterncalculus on 2/26/24, 11:32 PM
by nkrisc on 2/27/24, 12:00 AM
Some Pepper X hot sauce is all I need now. I’m now on my third bottle and no restaurant dish in my local suburbia is spicy to me anymore.
by not_the_fda on 2/26/24, 10:35 PM
by ericra on 2/26/24, 11:06 PM
For instance, I love hatch (Nex Mexico) chiles, but they seem quite difficult to get fresh outside of the region or at least during a very particular time of year. They are so much more flavorful than jalepenos imo, and have a similar amount of spice (not much). At least they are typically available canned, and they are still great.
by NelsonMinar on 2/26/24, 11:33 PM
I've always thought the California and Mexico weak peppers I got had more to do with irrigation practices than the varietal. But maybe it's both!
by eth0up on 2/27/24, 12:34 PM
I ferment habaneros and when I do, it's usually several pounds. I process by hand without gloves and evidence of this persists for days. It's only painful when exposed to heat, eg shower, handwash, etc. But as an avid capsaicin reservoir, I can attest that proper jalapenos can be surprisingly 'hot', while the typical store bought versions often can barely look a poblano in the eye without breaking a sweat.
by err4nt on 2/27/24, 3:03 PM
I can eat much spicier capsicum peppers than Jalapenos, and fresno peppers seem to give me no problems at all (which are the nearest cousin I've found to Jalapenos).
Does anyone know what I can do? Does my body's reaction to Jalapenos have to do with how ripe they are (green vs. red?), or is there any other reason or explanation by Jalapenos bother me but other peppers dont?
by meroes on 2/27/24, 12:08 AM
I’ve lost all confidence in my hot sauce recipe too now.
by paradox460 on 2/26/24, 11:49 PM
I miss territorial house salsa, but Pace killed them over 20 years ago, so I should probably move on
by giraffe_lady on 2/26/24, 10:21 PM
by alwillis on 2/27/24, 2:57 AM
One time I had to check if I bought the right thing.
Now it makes sense that I wasn’t imagining it.
I had already planned to grow my own jalapeños in this year’s garden before I read this article.
by alliao on 2/27/24, 1:27 AM
by tiffanyh on 2/26/24, 10:19 PM
by empath-nirvana on 2/26/24, 11:24 PM
by denton-scratch on 2/27/24, 11:15 AM
by burgerquizz on 2/26/24, 11:11 PM
by bogwog on 2/27/24, 1:07 AM
of course
by kosolam on 2/27/24, 11:50 AM
1. Jalapeño peppers are deliberately being bred to be bigger, shinier, prettier - but less spicy and less flavorful. This is driven by demand from the processed food industry for consistency.
2. About 60% of jalapeños go to processing plants for things like canned peppers, salsas, sauces, etc. These companies want predictable, mild heat levels so they can accurately label products as "mild," "medium," "hot."
3. In the last 20 years, a very popular jalapeño variety called TAM II has taken over much of the market. It was specifically bred to be huge, shiny, and very mild - less than 10% as spicy as traditional jalapeños.
4. The invention and popularity of TAM jalapeños is making the overall jalapeño gene pool larger but milder. Hotter, more flavorful varieties are losing ground.
5. There are still hotter jalapeño varieties like Mitla and Early jalapeños, but many restaurants and home cooks don't know to ask for specific pepper breeds.
6. Some experts draw comparisons to the tomato industry - mass-produced tomatoes lost flavor, but heirlooms are bringing it back. Perhaps hotter heirloom pepper varieties could also regain popularity.
by 0xbadcafebee on 2/27/24, 12:41 AM
There is no single food called "a Jalapeño". In the Solanaceae family, in the Capsicum genus, in the annuum sub-genus, there are dozens of hybrid and cultivar fruiting plants, which are all referred to as "Jalapeño". They all have different properties in how they grow and what they turn into. This includes taste, size, color, shape, and spiciness. (https://www.thechileman.org/results.php?chile=1&find=Jalapen...)
If you want to buy "a Jalapeño", or any kind of produce, and have a reliable experience, you can't just wander into a random store and pick up a generic name for 40 different cultivars, made god knows where and how, shipped to your neighborhood god knows how, and expect that the thing you selected is exactly what you wanted.
Imagine you want a burger. You go to the Big Burger Mart. From a giant bin labeled "Burger", you pick one Burger. You take it home and eat it. Will it be the burger you expected, from the place you expected, tasting the way you expected? Maybe not! But it's An Burger! You didn't seem to care what kind of burger it was when you picked it out of a big bin called "Burger". You didn't ask where it came from, how it was prepared, how long it's been sitting there, etc. So you can't really expect anything but "Generic Burger", which personally doesn't sound very tasty.
To get the produce you expect, you should buy a specific cultivar of produce from a reliable producer. And you're probably gonna need to buy it locally, because the food logistics chain delivering a pepper from Chile all the way to Nebraska is not going to result in an ideal pepper. Another way to get what you expect is to grow it yourself. Many jalapeño cultivars (and other peppers!) grow well in containers. If you want to skip the whole gardening thing, you can buy a pre-grown bush of jalapeño online from a nursery like Bonnie, and just keep it alive and enjoy fresh peppers indefinitely.
I actually feel bad for the supermarkets. They have to read the minds of customers that demand so much, feed back that information to growers about what to grow, and then get it into the stores, with 365-days-a-year perfect consistency, unblemished, "ripe", and tasty. It's an impossible task. Yet they pull it off, even to the point that people have grown up their whole lives not knowing what it is they're buying or how it gets into their shopping cart. But that doesn't stop people complaining about it.
by stevage on 2/26/24, 10:38 PM
by StillBored on 2/27/24, 3:17 AM
Then if one lives in the south, brings it inside next year over the winter, and stop fertilizing it, and reduces watering it to once a week or so, it will again produce peppers next year that will be a lot hotter, but during the summer if you live in somewhere its getting over 100F daily, stop watering it until it starts to drop its leaves and pull it back from the brink of death ever couple weeks over the summer. The last peppers to set in the late spring early summer will only grow to be an inch or so long and the plant will stubbornly refuse to drop them even when they start to shrivel a bit and its lost most of its full size leaves only sprouting 1/4" long leaves during the short periods of recovery when the soil isn't bone dry. Then after a couple months when those peppers get really dark before they start to turn red, pick one and taste it.
The second year that plan will produce peppers hotter than probably anything most people have ever tasted. But, the plant will get strong and gnarly, continue to mistreat it for another year or two and what you will have is a pepper that no one can actually eat.
In my 20's I found pleasure in sampling top ten lists of hottest hot sauces and peppers, but nothing prepared me for the pepper I pulled off a ~5 year old jalapeño plant I had largely been ignoring all summer long and hadn't been fertilized since it was a seedling. A single bite, and about two chews, and I went into an upper body "hickup" that might be better described as a repeating upper body spasm, and a mouth burn unlike anything I've ever experience before or since. Those are peppers one should pick with gloves.
Pepper genetics or even variety aren't the largest dictator of how hot a pepper is. A bigger factor is how they are grown. Give a young plant a 70-80F pleasant environment, plenty of water and nutrient rich soil and they produce lots and lots of peppers that vary only slightly in heat based on their variety. Exactly what a commercial grower will do to maximize yield. Keep a plant on life support for multiple years and it will be an ugly thing, producing only a few peppers that grow slowly and ripen slowly over months, stress it to the point where its largely dropped all its leaves and only has a few small leaves baked daily in full 100F+ sun and it will produce peppers that are by themselves in-edible.
by javier_e06 on 2/27/24, 1:13 PM
by omegared8 on 2/26/24, 11:59 PM
I am more dissatisfied with the constant mold than with the occasional spicy but as a free market capitalist how can I single the market when supply side has made a decision.
by amelius on 2/26/24, 11:42 PM
by thrwwycbr on 2/26/24, 10:19 PM
I'd argue that the real reason is that peppers are now mass produced in clean, bug-free, environments.
Which means: No bug bites, no spice.
If you grow peppers indoors where no bugs are, they tend to be a very mild produce. If you put them outside (and have enough insects around), they get much more spicy.
Of course the usage of pesticides contributes to that effect, due to bugs not having a chance to bite the fruits anymore.
by kylecazar on 2/26/24, 11:02 PM
by g8oz on 2/26/24, 11:50 PM