Chile Peppers are an integral element of many of the most exciting and most flavorful recipes in the world.
From the salsas of Central and South America and the jerk meats from the Caribbean to the piri piri of Africa and the curries of Southeast Asia, chiles provide heat and spice to many of the world's meals.
But they are not only incredibly versatile and tasty, they also happen to be quite fascinating.
7 Chile Facts That Will Spice Up A Boring Patio Party
1 - First off it's Chile with an "e." Chili is actually the Southwestern Cowboy stew with beef and beans which they mess up so badly in Cincinnati. However, the ideal chili usually includes a bit of chiles.
2 - Chiles are indigenous to the New World. Despite being a mainstay of the foods of Africa, India and Southeast Asia, peppers were entirely unknown in these regions until the sixteenth century. How quickly they caught on and utterly dominated the foods of these areas demonstrates just how fabulous these small flavor packs really are.
3 - Today India is the world's largest grower of chiles. Reread # 2.
4 - The Chile pod is actually a fruit.
5 - The substance that makes many chiles burn the tongue is known as capsaicin. The actual heat intensity is measured by a scale using something referred to as Scoville Units. It is a little too complex to describe precisely how it is determined in this brief article but below are a few chiles and their Scoville units to give you some idea of the range of heat you could experience:
Peperoncini (the yellow-green peppers found on Greek salads as well as in Papa John's Pizza Boxes) - around 200 Scoville Units
Jalapenoes (these are the little green pepper slices on top of the nachoes you get at the ball game) - 1,000 to 5,000 Scoville Units
Thai (these are found in many spicy Chinese dishes -- you'll know when you get one) - 100,000 Scoville Units
Red Savino (these are the world's hottest pepper) - an amazing 500,000 Scoville Units!
Did you get that? A Red Savino is around 100 to 500 times hotter than a Jalapeno!
6 - There are no poisonous peppers. Not any. Although a Thai or Red Savino may make you wish for death.
By the way, dairy products (milk, yogurt) are pretty good at helping to relieve the burning. Drinking water will not help much and alcohol will merely make it more painful. The only real cure is time. It will at last subside.
7 - Chiles are referred to as "peppers" due to a combination of wishful thinking as well as false advertising.
Early explorers typically were not looking for fame, brand new lands to conquer or even gold -- they were searching for ways to get spices or herbs, especially the original "black gold", pepper, to European countries more quickly and economically. Spices built the early fortunes of many cities and even nations along the spice route.
It was this particular desire, a faster route to the pepper markets of India, which led ol' Chris Columbus to begin sailing west to get east -- when he ran smack into the New World (a fact which he went to the grave never realizing, by the way.) He and all the explorers which followed never located the pepper they were seeking (which grows only in India), but they did find chiles. Dehydrated and ground in to a powder these became "Jamaican Pepper" in Europe and the label caught on and at some point came to denote not simply the powder in your kitchen spice rack, but also the fresh pod as well as the plant itself.
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