Wednesday, September 3, 2014

Habanero Chilli Peppers (Scotch Bonnet Variety?)

Have you seen or eaten Habanero Chilli Peppers before? My first encounter with Habanero Peppers was more than a decade ago when I was at Cameron  Highlands for a holiday with the family. I was at the farmers' market and was pretty excited when I spotted a few stalls selling these chilli peppers, as I was looking for it for quite a while, and have not seen it being sold anywhere. I bought 2 peppers, and tried to grow these peppers from the seeds, which unfortunately, I failed miserably! The seedlings all died.

A couple of  months ago, when I was at a nursery, I saw these Habanero Chilli Plants, and immediately bought one home. I was wondering about the variety of these Habanero Chilli, and the seller could not provide any help at all, as she does not know that these are called Habanero and only known it as Chilli Plant!

Habanero Peppers are among the hottest chilli peppers in the world. It was once listed as the hottest pepper in the world in The Guinness Book of World Records, back in 1999, and since then has been displaced by a number of other peppers. To view the latest "Top 10 World's Hottest Peppers", refer to the link here.

There are many different types and varieties of Habanero Peppers, ranging from long shaped to round, oval and bell-shaped. And different colours too, from orange, red, yellow, dark brown and white.


It has been growing well, and there's lot of new flowers popping at the stems all over.


The green young chillies will turn to red when ripe. I did a search from the internet to find out the variety of the one that I bought, and the closest that I can find is, these are similar to the Scotch Bonnet Peppers . These peppers are extremely hot, and is a member of the Habanero Peppers, has a scale of 100,000 to 350,000 Scoville Units. Just to compare, our local red bird's eye chillies has a scale of 50,000 to 100,00 Scoville units. 


Some of the new flowers. It's a wonder that these dainty flowers would turn into "powerhouse" peppers!


More flower buds forming.


Are these Scotch Bonnet Peppers? Does anyone know? Harvested these and planning to make some hot chilli sauce with it. 
These chillis are really cute!


Cute but "deadly"!  

I am a chilli lover, I would eat about 3-5 red birds eye chillies almost daily with my meals, but not these Peppers! I chopped one of these and mix with my usual condiment of soy sauce and squeeze of lime, and I could not even finish half of it! These are REALLY SUPER HOT!!! Definitely not for the faint hearted. On the next day, I chopped half a pepper and I could not finish it too! So from the next day, I chopped only a quarter. So one chilli pepper can last me four days! And got to be careful when handling these peppers with your bare hands, the hotness can sting your hands for hours. A word of caution, do not touch any part of your body with your hands if they are burning hot from the Habaneros! Especially your eyes!!! So to be on the save side, wear a pair of gloves, especially when you have to take care of young kids at home.


Left the first two chillies to dry, for the seeds.
I'll be sowing these seeds and hopefully this time, I'll see some success.


Happy Gardening !


22 comments:

  1. Joyce, I have not seen these Habanero Peppers in the flesh! They look rather decorative. As I was reading, I wanted to ask you if you ate them with your "see yau" condiment hah..hah...Then I read that it was too hot for you. If you can eat 3-5 cili padi almost daily with your meals, you win hands down hah..hah..because I cannot tahan. I will be very ambitious and slice up 3-4 and end up with leftovers. Especially with the red variety that is labelled Bangladeshi chillies. The green ones are quite OK for me. I can eat more. So you have here one of the hottest chillies on the planet. Better not play-play hee..hee...

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    1. Hi Phong Hong,
      Yes, the Bangladeshi Chillies are very hot. I like eating that variety of chili padi. This habanero are many times hotter! "Better not play-play", I totally agree, if you cannot take really, really hot heat, you'll end up "cry-cry"!! Haha!

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  2. I love chilies! I've posted about chilies recently too. Yours look lovely indeed :)
    I think that these aren't scotch bonnet because they have a typical pointed end, and scotch bonnets have round bottom. Check here: semillas.de maybe you'll find there your pepper :)

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    1. Hi Dewberry,
      Thanks for the info on Scotch Bonnet. Will take a look at that website.
      Thanks for stopping by!

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  3. I never heard or ate this chillies! They look like pepper bell! Must be so spicy!
    By the way, do you still have malabar spinach seeds?

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    1. Hi Malar,
      These chillis are super spicy!
      I do not have any malabar spinach seeds. I grew them from the stems when I bought the veggies from the market, really easy to grow! Use the leaves for your cooking, and plant the stems in the soil, and in within a week, you'll see new leaves starts to grow.

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  4. So interesting! It's a litte bit different to my habanero. I still have some seeds to be sowed. I hope I will be lucky.

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    1. Hi Endah,
      I am wondering which variety your habanero seeds belong to. Very interesting to see all the different varieties with different shapes and colours.
      Good luck with your seeds!

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  5. So pretty, but they pack a real punch by the sound of it ! I am aware of Scotch bonnet chillies but not your habanero, so thank you for introducing me !

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  6. You have a beautiful 'hot' thing growing there! I think I have tried this before in Cameron Highlands. It was a long time ago, so now I have forgotten how those chilli really look like. All I recall was that it burned my tongue and stomach! Well, I guess a little at a time (with the soy sauce) for dipping is ok. Enjoy the 'heat'!

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  7. Hello I just found your blog and I like it so I followed you. Habaneros are very hot and sometimes habaneros are called Scotch Bonnets. I've grown these and yes they are very hot. I dry most of the chili's in my dehydrator and when completely dry, I grind them in a coffee grinder that I use only for chili. When it is powdered, I leave it on paper towels overnight to be sure the powdered habanero is ready to be put in a jar or other container. Works great for sprinkling on meat or veggies. You still have to be very careful because it is very hot. Nice to meet you and I look forward to reading some of your other garden posts.

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  8. They definitely look like they have scotch bonnet in them and also red savina. The perplexing part is they have bumps on them. This means thy are crossed with a superhot, likely a ghost or the like. But something over 1M SHU. Are these hotter than a habanero? This phenotype/pod likely won't come out in the seeds. I would clone these plants off the stems you got the bumpy peppers instead.

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  9. Hello. My husband and I visited few nurseries in Sg. Buloh for habanero plants but they were all sold out. May I know where did you get yours from?

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  11. hi, may i know where in selangor did you get your habanero plant?

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  12. hi, may i know where in selangor did you get your habanero plant?

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  13. hi, may i know where in selangor did you get your habanero plant?

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  14. There's a guy from Kelantan, he buys the chilli seeds from overseas and grows them here.. I did buy the present "hottest chilli in the world" seeds from him called Carolina Reaper... but didnt work out.. i need more practice... I also bought the chilli powder/flakes called Big Black Mama.. wow.. its so hot that u feel ur a dragon breathing out fire.. Habenero is a baby compared to carolina reaper or big black mama..lol... You can buy the chilli seeds n powder from Bakh Ibrahim (On FB).. good luck n stay safe

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  15. Locally it is called chilli gronong.
    You will find lots of it in Kuching- Satok wet market

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  16. Hi there.. can u sell me 10 pcs of the red habanero seeds? And what other chilli u have? i would like to buy from you

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  17. Great article!
    I also did some research about 5 hottest chili peppers that you can find on earth based on the Scoville scale. See below for the article:
    https://5knowledges.com/5-hottest-chili-peppers-on-earth-scoville-scale/
    Thank you!

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  18. if I'm not mistaken these are the red savina habanero peppers

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