Showing posts with label Habanero Chilli Peppers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Habanero Chilli Peppers. Show all posts

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 !