Some Like IT Hot, Some Like IT Mild

By Roland Piquepaille

It's Sunday, so you have enough time for cooking. Why not trying a Mexican spicy dinner using some super hot jalapeño or habanero peppers? Too strong for you? No problem. Two years after creating mild jalapeño peppers, Texas pepper breeders have created a mild habanero pepper after 5 years of research. The New York Times reports that this mild habanero is available to growers and you'll soon find it in grocery stores (free registration, but permanent link). As says Dr. Crosby, the plant geneticist who bred this habanero pepper, "It's a pretty fruit. It's got the flavor but it doesn't kill you." Read more before enjoying your meal...

Before going further, why this need for a mild habanero pepper?

With worldwide pepper consumption on the rise, according to industry experts, the new variety -- a heart-shaped nugget bred in benign golden yellow to distinguish it from the alarming orange original, the common Yucatan habanero -- is beginning to reach store shelves, to the delight of processors and the research station, which stands to earn unspecified royalties if the new pepper catches on.

"I love it," said Josh Ruiz, a local farmer whose pickers this week filled some 200 boxes of the peppers to be sold to grocers for about $35 a box. "It yields good and I'm able to eat it." As for the Yucatan habanero, he said, "My stomach just can't take it."

By comparison, if a regular jalapeño scores between 5,000 and 10,000 units on the Scoville scale of pepper hotness based on the amount of the chemical capsaicin (cap-SAY-sin), and a regular habanero averages around 300,000 to 400,000 units, A&M's mild version registers a tepid 2,300, or barely one-hundredth of its coolest formidable namesake. A bell pepper, by the way, scores zero.

For more information about the Scoville scale, which was devised in 1912, you can read this page from Wikipedia, which tells us more about habanero peppers in this other page.

Now let's look at how this mild habanero is grown at the Texas A&M Agricultural Experiment Station (TAM).

The process to produce a more palatable habanero, Dr. Crosby said, began with cross-breeding a regular hot variety with germ plasm from a wild heatless pepper from Bolivia. "We took pollen from the hot to pollinate the heatless to create a hybrid," he said. The hybrid was then self-pollinated, fertilized with its own pollen, to inbreed desired qualities and then, Dr. Crosby said, "backcrossed to the hot to recover more of its genes for flavor." That was repeated for eight generations, or four years at two growing seasons a year, to produce the TAM Mild Habanero.

And did you know there was an International Pepper Conference? The 17th conference was held last week in Naples, Florida, on November 14-16. And Dr. Crosby animated a discussion about "Breeding Peppers for Enhanced Beneficial Phytochemical Compounds."

If you want to know more about his work, you can read "Texas plant breeder develops mild habanero pepper" (PDF format, 2 pages, August 2004).

Finally, I cannot conclude this column before giving you a recipe. What about some Habanero Pepper Sauce from Diana's Kitchen?

Here is what you'll need.

• 12 habanero peppers, stems removed, finley chopped
• 1/2 cup chopped onion
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
• 1/2 cup chopped carrots
• 1/2 cup distilled vinegar
• 1/4 cup lime juice

And here is your cooking assignment.

Saute the onion and garlic in oil until soft; add the carrots with a small amount of water. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer until carrots are soft. Place the mixture and raw chiles into a blender and puree until smooth. Don't cook the peppers, since cooking reduces flavor of the Habaneros. Combine the puree with vinegar and lime juice, then simmer for 5 minutes and seal in sterilized bottles.

But be warned if you're using hot habanero peppers. This recipe is rated 9 on a scale of 1 to 10 by the author, B. Emert.

And now, bon appétit!

Sources: Ralph Blumenthal, The New York Times, November 21, 2004; and various websites

Related stories can be found in the following categories.

• Agriculture
  
• Biotechnology
  
• Food