What's your favorite hot pepper?

[festus]

Last spring I started some hot pepper plants from seeds that cost 4 packs for a buck from the Dollar General store.  One variety was labeled habanero with orange colored fruits on the label.  The result was completely different from the photo.  Don't know if these are Carribean Red, Red Savina, or an unknown hybrid.

The last few years I've grown scorpion, ghost, Carolina Reaper, fatalli, and several other super hots.  Ghost is pretty much as hot as I can handle, the reapers and the scorpions don't have much flavor other than searing heat. 

Whatever this hybrid is, I like it and canned several jars of unfermented sauce using fresh tomatoes, garlic, onion, red wine vinegar, salt, and other ingredients this past summer.

[gstours]

Save your seeds and replant.  Sounds good though. Do they all get red?  Are the green ones less hot?   Just wondering?

[STRIPER LOU]

I pretty much like them all. I did get a batch of pickled habanero's from a gentlemen from sunny cal that were so hot, it took me nearly a year to finish the jar.

If its like putting a torch on your tongue with no flavor, .. I'm out.

..............Lou

[conchydong]

Bahamian bird peppers because that is what I grew up with.

[Shark Hunter]

Every time peppers come up. I think of John.
I'll stick with Jalapeno's.

[Dominick]

Chili Relleno is a gamer.  I wouldn't do that.  I won't go higher than pickled jalapenos.  I like the heat in poblanos and pasillas but they aren't always hot.  Dominick

[FatTuna]

Man that ghost chili video was hard to watch.

This one time I ordered a bowl a chili when I was up in Montreal. They cooked it with some super hot peppers that were supposed to be removed before serving. Someone dared me to eat it and I got really sick. Let's just say that I couldn't ski for the rest of the trip and it burned like fire every time I went to the bathroom for days. Never again.

[MarkT]

Serrano is the hottest I like to go.  Some of the really hot chillis are like putting a flame thrower in your mouth.

[ChileRelleno]

Daron, I still have some of those Carolina Reapers pickled in the fridge.
I've been working on them, but damnation and hellfire are those suckers hot as Satan's shat.
I tried to make salsa with'em but nobody could handle it with even a 1/2 a teaspoon minced.

I've never met a Chile Pepper I was scared of, and I've ate'em all...  Even the Carolina Reaper.
I eat Habeneros like most folks eat Jalapenos, Ghosts are where it starts to get significantly hot for me.

Right now I've a nice big jar of freshly pickled Jamaican Scotch Bonnets that are freaking delicious and fairly mild.

[MarkT]

Scotch Bonnets are fairly mild? Son, you've burned out your tongues heat sensors!

[happyhooker]

Jalapenos are pretty easy to grow; not necessarily the hottest, but pretty good.

In the last couple of years, we've grown pepperoncini (sp.), which usually aren't too hot, but tasty.  You can can 'em up & eat 'em all winter.  We have also tried corne de toro ("horn of the bull"), which are sometimes hot but not blazing.

Frank

[David Hall]

Habanero is a good pepper with good flavor and about as high on the heat scale as I care to venture.  I grew some ghosts this year and we tried one.  Nope! Can't see how the heck I can use it.  I love a good hot pecante
With Serrano and or Arbols.  I pickled jalapeños, serrano, Arbols, whole and chopped with garlic.  Love them on a cracker.

[happyhooker]

Last spring I started some hot pepper plants from seeds that cost 4 packs for a buck from the Dollar General store.  One variety was labeled habanero with orange colored fruits on the label.  The result was completely different from the photo.  Don't know if these are Carribean Red, Red Savina, or an unknown hybrid.

There's a hybrid Habanero-type called "Burning Bush" that has short (less than 3") fruit that can be green to orange; pretty hot.  Ghosts are pretty short fruits too, but blazing hot.  "Mariachi" hybrids are short fruit, green, yellow, orange, red, and just a tad hot.  There are many more varieties, I'm sure.

If you got the seeds for a quarter, they maybe weren't any sort of hybrid (did the packet say so?).  As far as saving seeds, many hybrids won't breed true from saved seeds.

Frank

[oc1]

We have a little pepper that the birds move around and comes up from seed here and there.  It's called Hawaiian Pepper but the same plant is called Chili Pequin in South Texas and it is naturalized there too.  They're good pickled but to too hot for me right out of the jar.  We usually just pick fresh to cook with.  One pepper for every two or three servings seems to be about right for most dishes.

I used to like jalapenos but Texas A&M University horticulture screwed them up by breeding a variety that grows much faster and produces heavily on a short plant.  For a while they were usually marked "TAMU" in the stores.  Now, TAMU is about the only thing growers produce because it is so economical.  Trouble is, they do not have the heat and flavor that the old varieties did.  The stubby dark green ones with thick flesh and some brown netting pattern on them were the best.
-steve

[day0ne]

TAMU grew those with less heat on purpose. That was the whole idea.