Chilli pepper

What it is¶

A chilli pepper is the fruit of a plant in the genus Capsicum, part of the nightshade family alongside tomatoes, potatoes and aubergines. Botanically each pod is a berry: a fleshy wall around a hollow cavity, with seeds attached to a pale spongy core called the placenta. The heat comes from capsaicinoids, chiefly capsaicin, which the plant makes in the placenta and the ribs that run from it. The seeds are hot mainly because they sit against that tissue.

The name is a muddle. Spanish explorers took the Nahuatl word chīlli and, because the pods burned like the black pepper they had come looking for, added pimiento (pepper). English has kept both halves: chilli in Britain, chili or chile in the United States, and pepper everywhere. None of them is related to black pepper, which is Piper nigrum from a different plant family entirely.

The five domesticated species¶

Around 25–35 wild Capsicum species are recognised (botanists disagree on the count), but five were domesticated and supply almost every chilli in the kitchen:

C. annuum, C. chinense and C. frutescens are so closely related that some botanists treat them as a single species complex, and they hybridise readily. The name chinense ("from China") is an eighteenth-century misunderstanding by the Dutch botanist Nikolaus von Jacquin; the species has nothing to do with China.

Origins and history¶

Chillies are among the oldest cultivated plants of the Americas. Archaeological remains from the Tehuacán Valley in Mexico and starch grains found on grinding stones across Central and South America show people using them at least 6,000 years ago, and wild chillies were gathered long before that. C. annuum was domesticated in Mexico; C. chinense, C. baccatum and C. pubescens in South America.

Columbus met chillies in the Caribbean on his first voyage and brought seeds to Spain in 1493. What happened next was astonishingly fast. Portuguese traders, working the sea route to Africa and Asia, carried chillies to West Africa, Goa, Southeast Asia and Japan within a few decades, and the plants were grown in India and China by the late sixteenth century. Ottoman trade carried them into the Balkans and Hungary, where they became paprika. Within about a hundred years, a plant unknown outside the Americas had become central to cooking from Sichuan to Senegal. The full story is told in how chillies spread around the world and the columbian exchange.

Chillies succeeded because they grow easily from seed in hot climates, crop heavily, dry well, and gave poorer cooks a cheap source of intense flavour where imported black pepper was expensive.

Flavour and aroma¶

Heat is only part of it. Chillies range from the grassy, green bitterness of an unripe jalapeño to the dried-fruit sweetness of ancho, the apricot-and-tropical perfume of habanero and the woodsmoke of chipotle. As a pod ripens from green to red, yellow, orange or brown, it becomes sweeter and fruitier; drying concentrates sugars and adds raisin, leather and tobacco notes.

Heat and the Scoville scale¶

Pungency is measured in Scoville Heat Units (SHU), named after the American pharmacist Wilbur Scoville, who devised a tasting-panel test in 1912. Laboratories now measure capsaicinoids directly by liquid chromatography and convert the result to SHU. Ranges are wide because heat depends on variety, sunshine, water stress and ripeness: two chillies from the same plant can differ noticeably. See the scoville scale for the detail.

Capsaicin does not burn anything: it binds to the TRPV1 receptor, the same nerve sensor that detects scalding heat, and the brain reports fire.

In the kitchen¶

Fresh versus dried: why one chilli has two names¶

In Mexican cooking a chilli often has one name fresh and another dried, because drying changes it so much it is treated as a different ingredient:

Fresh chillies bring brightness and crunch to salsas, stir-fries and pickles. Dried chillies are toasted, soaked and blended into sauces such as mole, or ground into powders and flakes. See rehydrating dried chillies.

Controlling the heat¶

• Remove the placenta and ribs, not just the seeds, to tame a chilli.
• Add fresh chilli early for a mellow background, late for a sharp hit.
• Whole dried chillies fried in oil at the start of a curry (tempering) flavour the fat; remove them before serving if guests are cautious.
• Fat, sugar and acid all soften the perceived burn. If a dish is too hot, see cooling a dish thats too hot.

Buying and storing¶

Choose fresh chillies that are glossy, firm and heavy for their size, with green stems. Keep them unwashed in a paper bag in the fridge salad drawer for one to two weeks. They freeze well whole; they will be soft on thawing but fine for cooking.

Dried chillies should be supple and leathery, not brittle or dusty, with deep colour. Store airtight away from light for up to a year. Powders lose colour and aroma quickest: buy small amounts, and keep red powders such as paprika away from sunlight, which bleaches them. See storing spices.

Substitutes¶

Swap by heat and by character. Replace fresh with fresh and dried with dried where possible; a pinch of cayenne can stand in for heat, but not for the fruit of a habanero or the smoke of a chipotle. Chilli flakes are the universal emergency option. For no heat at all, use sweet paprika or bell pepper.

Pairs well with¶

Garlic, ginger, lime, coriander leaf, cumin, tomato, onion, chocolate, pork, beans, lemongrass, fish sauce, soy, yoghurt and anything fatty.

Growing your own¶

Chillies are tender perennials usually grown as annuals. In the UK, sow seeds indoors from January to March at 20–25°C; superhot C. chinense varieties are slow to germinate and need the early start. Grow on in a bright windowsill, greenhouse or polytunnel, and move outside only after the last frost, into a sunny, sheltered spot. Feed with a high-potash (tomato) fertiliser once flowers appear, and let the compost dry slightly between waterings: mild water stress tends to raise heat. C. pubescens is the exception to the heat-loving rule and copes with cooler conditions. Plants can be kept over winter indoors. See growing chillies and overwintering chillies.

Health and safety¶

Chillies are safe food, but capsaicin can cause real distress in large amounts, and very hot extracts and superhot chillies have caused hospital visits. Keep chilli well away from eyes and children, and see extreme chilli risks.

More varieties¶

Twenty-five more chillies, each with its own page, from the heatless bell pepper to the superhots:

• 7 Pot chillies
• Ají dulce
• Ají panca
• Banana pepper and Hungarian wax
• Bell pepper
• Byadgi chilli
• Cascabel
• Chiltepín and pequín
• Datil pepper
• Dorset naga
• Facing heaven chilli
• Fatalii
• Fresno chilli
• Guindilla
• Guntur chilli
• Madame Jeanette
• Maraş biber
• Mulato
• New Mexico chile
• Ñora
• Pepperoncini
• Piquillo pepper
• Rocoto
• Tabasco pepper
• Trinidad Moruga Scorpion

See also¶

• capsaicin
• the scoville scale
• growing chillies
• how chillies spread around the world
• handling chillies safely
• hot sauce
• paprika