Chile Pepper Fun Fact - Demon’s Spice
The Power of Chiles Compels You...
Chile peppers are considered the ‘Demon’s Spice’ in southern Italy. However, some locals use it for personal protection, or to protect your car or your house from the evil eye and gossipers.
Just hang a fresh string of chillies in the house, at the door or on the balcony, or perhaps carry a plastic ‘horn’, which looks like a chile pepper, in your pocket as a lucky charm. Tradition dictates the chillies should be fresh, not dry, to ensure good fortune.
Whether or not you’re convinced by these benefits, one thing is undoubtedly true of chile peppers: fresh, flaked or powdered, they add a delicious heat to your cooking. Not only that, but they’re also thought to have a number of health benefits and are packed with vitamins and minerals such as vitamins C, B6, K1 and A, as well as potassium and copper.
Chile Pepper Fun Fact - The Datil Chile Pepper
The Official Chile Pepper of St. Augustine, Florida
A datil pepper is a small hot pepper found in great abundance locally here in St. Augustine. The pepper is a variety of the species Capsicum Chinese also known as "yellow lantern chili." The botanist who discovered Capsicum Chinese misnamed the plant, believing peppers of this species originated in China.
The official pepper of St. Augustine, Florida. Go there and you'll find many restaurants proudly feature this pepper which has been a part of the city's heritage for over a century. They even have an annual Datil Pepper Festival in October, with the first Saturday in October being Datil Pepper Day. The festival aims to encourage the cultivation of the Datil pepper in the St. Augustine area.
A datil pepper is similar in its heat index to a habanero, hitting at around 100,000 to 300,000 on the Scoville scale--a scale used to measure the spiciness of peppers. But unlike habaneros, datil peppers are sweet, with a fruitful tangy taste to them.
Chile Pepper Fun Fact - Corking, Not Just in Wine
Chile peppers can get stretch marks?
Corking on jalapeño peppers appears as scaring or minor striations on the surface of the pepper skin. When you see jalapeño skin cracking in this manner, it simply means that it needs to stretch to accommodate the rapid growth of the pepper.
Peppers with "corking" will be hotter and sweeter than those that are smooth. A: Jalapeno peppers are prone to this light brown cracking, called corking. It is the plant's way of closing and sealing the skin cracks that develop with normal maturing.
Corking happens when there is a lot of rain or any other source of water (soaker hoses), as well as plenty of sunshine, the pepper goes into a growth spurt, causing corking. Many different sorts of hot peppers are subject to this corking process, although not sweet pepper cultivars
Chile Pepper Fun Fact - Colorado vs. New Mexico
My Chile Peppers are better. No way, mine are way better than yours...
The heated rivalry between Colorado and New Mexico is a hot one! It’s over Hatch versus Pueblo chile. And it's a heated debate... Heated, get it.
The battle began when Colorado Gov. Jared Polis shared on Facebook that New Mexico’s Hatch chile is “inferior” to Pueblo’s on a post about Whole Foods selling Pueblo chile in the Rocky Mountain region.
Polis then told The Sante Fe New Mexican that Pueblo chile is “the best in the world.”
New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham fired back on Twitter and said, “If Pueblo chile were any good, surely it would have been on national shelves before now. But if Gov. Polis wants to go chile to chile, I assure him New Mexico can bring the heat.”
The debate re-ignited on social media when Governor Jared Polis took to Facebook to announce that Whole Foods would carry Pueblo chiles. He wrote, "New Mexico stores will unfortunately not be offering the best chile and will instead keep offering inferior New Mexico chile." Those were fighting words.
Hot Sauce Fun Fact - All-Encompassing Brand Names
People ask for a Coke, Kleenex and Tabasco...
But these are brand names and not actually an all-encompassing view of what products they actually are.
Tabasco is, in fact, the brand name of the American-made product, a very specific red-pepper sauce that is produced by the McIlhenny Co. in Louisiana. The McIlhenny family has made Tabasco sauce on Avery Island for some five generations. As the company shares, “Built on a salt dome, it’s a mysteriously beautiful place where the red peppers grow, the factory hums, and abundant wildlife can be seen in Jungle Gardens.” Tripadvisor even places the company’s factory tour on its top five things to do on the island.
McIlhenny grew his first commercial crop in 1868 and by the following year would send out 658 bottles of the sauce (at $1 each, wholesale) to Gulf Coast grocers, especially those in New Orleans. He labeled his creation, “Tabasco,’ a word of Mexican Indian origin believed to mean ‘place where the soil is humid’ or ‘place of the coral or oyster shell."
Chile Pepper Fun Fact - Cinco de Mayo
Happy Cinco de Mayo!
This holiday celebrates the date of the Mexican army’s May 5, 1862, victory over France at the Battle of Puebla during the Franco-Mexican War.
While it is a relatively minor holiday in Mexico, in the United States, Cinco de Mayo has evolved into a commemoration of Mexican culture and heritage.
While some may think the official food of Cinco de Mayo would be tacos, tapas, or even carnitas, it's actually Mole Poblano!
Mole Poblano is a dark brown sauce made with Mexican Chocolate and a large variety of spices w/ the main ones being dried ancho, mulato and pasilla chilies, chocolate, plantains, almonds, pumpkin seeds, cinnamon sticks, anise, and cloves.
Chef Enrique Olvera restaurant, Pujol has kept his Mole cooking for over 2,000 days adding new ingredients in with every season!
Chile Pepper Fun Fact - Christopher Columbus
The Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria and Chile Peppers?
Chile peppers are eaten by a quarter of the earth’s population every day, in countries all over the globe. They are perennial shrubs belonging to the Capsicum family and were unknown to a good chunk of the world until Christopher Columbus made his way to the New World in 1492.
Columbus didn’t “find” them, of course. There are several origination theories flagging Brazil, Mexico, and other parts of South America as “the” spot for where chilies came from. A 2016 phylogenetic analysis of 24 of the 35 Capsicum strains, spicy and otherwise, found that they are native to an area along the Andes of western to north-western South America. These wild Capsicum were “small red, round, berry-like fruits “.
Use of chilies in both South American and early Mesoamerica, the region that extends from Central Mexico to Central America and northern Costa Rica, both lead to domestication in those areas and use in local cuisine in pre-Hispanic times.
In South America, researchers have identified starch grains of Capsicum on milling stones and cooking pots recovered from house floors in southwestern Ecuador dating them to around 6,000 years ago. These microfossil remains are some of the earliest chili peppers documented from the region. In addition, while many records from Mesoamerica focus on cultivation of squash, corn, manioc, and more without focus on chiles, an archeological study has shown via microfossils that the use of chiles in Mesoamerica may date all the way back to about 400 BCE.
Scientists believe that birds are mainly responsible for the spread of wild chili peppers out of their nuclear origination areas, with domestication via Mesoamerican populations thereafter. As noted below, birds don’t have receptors that feel the sting of a chili’s spice, and it doesn’t cause any harm to their digestive systems.
Capsicum annuum, the ancestor to most of the peppers commonly consumed today, was grown in pre-Hispanic times in parts of the arid Southwest, and Texas, as well as in Mexico.
Hot Sauce Fun Fact - Great Pyramid of Cholula
Cholula is named after an ancient city but isn't made there...
Cholula is an ancient city steeped in incredible history. It's home to the Great Pyramid of Cholula, an Aztec structure that is the biggest pyramid in the world. The 2,500-year-old city in Puebla is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in North America. Perhaps surprisingly, Cholula hot sauce is not made in this city.
Cholula is actually made in Chapala, Jalisco, Mexico. The first U.S. city that Cholula was sold in was Austin, Texas. It debuted there in 1989 after it had expanded throughout Mexico. Cholula was sold in supermarkets In the Southwestern U.S. in the '90s. Today, it's found across the whole U.S., as well as in Canada, according to MexGrocer. However, the history of Cholula goes back much further. The hot sauce brand was, in fact, inspired by a family recipe that is over 100 years old.
Chile Pepper Fun Fact - Chinese Tree Shrew
The Taming of the Shrew? Or at least their heat tolerance...
Can you eat as many chili peppers as a Chinese tree shrew? Probably not. A recent study found that these tree shrews are the only mammal aside from humans known to deliberately seek out spicy foods.
Researchers in China found a mutation in the species’ ion channel receptor, TRPV1, that makes it less sensitive to capsaicin, the “hot” chemical in chili peppers.
This is the channel that acts as a pain receptor on the tongues and throats of mammals, alerting the brain when it comes in contact with harmful heat. (Read the history of spicy peppers in human cuisine.)
But thanks to the genetic mutation, tree shrews don’t feel as much pain from spicy food.
Chile Pepper Fun Fact - Chile Pepper Myth and Legend
The ritual uses of the genus Capsicum range from the innocuous to the murderous, but the fiery pods are always powerful. In astrology, the chile pepper falls under the dominion of Mars, ancient god of war, so that should be some indication of respect. Fuentes y Guzmán wrote in 1690 that those who frequently ate red pepper were protected against poison, while the Incas prohibited the use chile of chiles at initiation and funeral rites. We do not know why the pods were precluded by the Incas, but we console ourselves with the knowledge that Capsicums were associated with lightning bolts in Incan mythology–that we can easily understand.
One of the commonest household uses of chile peppers in cultures all over the world is burning them as a fumigant for vermin ranging from bedbugs to rats. Since fumigation in ancient times was also believed to be protection against vampires and werewolves, we have a good introduction to the concept of the magical powers of peppers.
“Chile is used as an amulet, probably because of its well-known protective pharmacological properties, and in religious ceremonies, witchcraft, and conjuring; its fiery potency is considered a powerful means to any end,” observed Beatrice Roeder, author of Chicano Folk Medicine from Los Angeles, California.
In a ritual from Coahuila, Mexico, chiles are instrumental in countering the effects of “salting,” a ritual to cast a spell on a person to cause them harm, particularly mental problems. Such witchcraft is called maleficio in Mexico. To cast the spell, the evildoer gathers dirt from the grave of a person who died a violent death. Then he or she gathers salt from the homes of three widows, or from the homes of three women named Jane (Juana). The salt is mixed with the soil and is sprinkled in front of the door of the victim.
By: Dave DeWitt
Christened the "Pope of Peppers" by The New York Times, Dave DeWitt is a food historian and one of the foremost authorities in the world on chile peppers, spices, and spicy foods.