Jalapeno: why yours may be mild

The chile that every heat comparison in the US is written against, including the ones on this site. When a page says something is “twice a jalapeño,” this is the unit.

It is worth knowing that the unit has been drifting.

How hot it is

2,500 to 8,000 Scoville — and that range is unusually wide for a reason.

Commercial growers in the US have been selecting for milder, larger, more uniform fruit for decades, because that is what the fresh market and the pickling industry want. A supermarket jalapeño today commonly lands near the bottom of that range, around 2,500 SHU, and sometimes below it.

If you have ever wondered why a recipe’s heat warning did not match what you made, this is usually why. A jalapeño from a farmers market or a home garden can be three times hotter than one from a chain store, from the same seed.

What the white lines mean

Look for fine, pale, corky striations on the skin — growers call it corking.

Those lines form when the fruit grows faster than its skin and the skin splits and heals. They correlate with a chile that stayed on the plant longer and was stressed, and stressed chiles make more capsaicin.

Corked jalapeños are the hot ones. In Mexico they are preferred and priced accordingly; in US supermarkets they are often culled as blemished. If you find them, take them.

Its real virtue is the flesh

Among fresh chiles the jalapeño is unusually thick-walled, and that is what it is actually for.

That flesh is why it is the chile for pickling — it holds its texture in vinegar for weeks where a serrano goes limp. It is why it is the one you stuff. And it is why a jalapeño salsa comes out thicker and more substantial than a serrano salsa made the same way.

For a raw table salsa, the serrano is usually the better chile: thinner, cleaner, sharper. For anything where the chile has to hold up as an object, the jalapeño wins.

What it becomes when smoked

Every chipotle is a smoked jalapeño, left to ripen red on the bush first.

• Smoked lightly: morita, small, wine-red, gentle smoke.
• Smoked long: chipotle meco, grey-brown, brittle, heavy smoke.
• Either, canned in sauce: chipotle in adobo.

Same chile, three completely different ingredients. Worth knowing when a recipe calls for chipotle and gives no further detail — it almost always means the canned kind.

Green or red

The green jalapeño is the unripe fruit. Left on the plant it turns red, gets sweeter, and gets somewhat hotter.

Red jalapeños are uncommon in US stores because they bruise easily and ship badly, but if you see them they are worth buying — they make a noticeably rounder salsa.

Buying and storing

Firm, glossy, heavy for its size, with a green stem. A wrinkled jalapeño has lost water and will taste flat.

In the crisper drawer, unbagged, two weeks. Do not seal them in plastic; trapped moisture rots the stem end first.

They freeze whole surprisingly well for cooked uses, though they collapse on thawing and are no good raw after that.