My stores offer a dozen varieties of chile peppers, but ripe red jalapeños aren’t among them. I once asked a produce manager that question. “They wouldn’t sell,” he replied. How come is that?

I currently have a refrigerator full of Henning’s brand cheddar cheese flavored with chipotle (ripe red smoked jalapeños) and it’s delicious. Don’t other folks think ripe red jalapeños taste good?

Are you saying the green ones aren't ripe?

My wife and I love them. That's why we grow jalapenos every year.
Besides using them fresh, we make pickled slices and relish to use through the fall, winter and spring.

Leaving them to fully ripen on the plant and turn red results in a hotter pepper (and more flavor).

Because most grocery stores are more concerned about shelf life than taste. That's why they're full of produce that was picked prior to being ripe and it either ripens during transit or they artificially "ripen" it (e.g. ethylene gas to make green tomatoes turn red).

The jalapenos grown in my garden are technically ripe when dark green, but I let them go until they're red. They don't store as long when they're red, but not a concern for me as nearly all are either being made into jalapeno poppers or going in a batch of salsa. I do give away a few and almost always get the question, "Is this a special variety of red jalapeno?"

quote:

Originally posted by 1967Goat:
Are you saying the green ones aren't ripe?

No, the green ones aren't ripe yet.

Most stores don't sell them because most of the world eats them green. The same thing goes for bell peppers, serranos, hatch chilis and many others.

I can't think of any peppers that ripen to green now that I think about it, so if your eating a pepper and it's still green it's an immature pepper.

I’ll just comment that most of the habaneros in my stores are red-orange. Apparently those sell.

Its the perception that jalapenos are always green. I cant think of a single time I have saw the word red next to jalapeno.

Do you have an asian or hispanic supermarket in your area?

If so, try those. They will often carry a lot of types of produce that traditional supermarkets do not. Including various less common peppers.

Consumers have this perception, and expectation, that jalapenos are green. It's splashed everywhere and that belief carries the marketing day.

It's like bananas. The average grocery store carries one variety - Cavandish - because it's what consumers envision when you think of a banana but there are more than 1,000 varieties. Sometime you can go to specialty store are find others but it's quite rare. The funny thing is that other varieties are more flavorful but the Cavandish is what consumers want.

Used to be the same way with apples when all you thought was Red Delicious but now most every store has 5 or more varieties you can choose from year round. Fuji, Pink Lady, Honey Crisp, Ambrosia and many more.

Around here, the jalapeno peppers are very mild, no real heat at all.
Didn't used to be that way, they used to have real heat.

Don't know what happened. I've tried different stores, same deal. No heat.

I would buy red ones if they packed the heat, but I've never seen one.

Sriracha is made with red ripe jalapenos. Just a fun fact.

Most of the time, the jalapenos I encounter are pretty mild. Then, every once in a while, some fucker packs a spicy one in my Banh Mi and then I regret my cavalier attitude towards spicy peppers.

quote:

Originally posted by Aeteocles:
Then, every once in a while, some fucker packs a spicy one in my Banh Mi and then I regret my cavalier attitude towards spicy peppers.

Probably unintentional as a mild jalapeno, normal jalapeno, and hot jalapeno look the same.

My garden the past 5 years was pretty high density (i.e. small with close together plants) which means a jalapeno plant frequently has hot pepper (e.g. serrano or cayenne) on one side and a milder pepper (e.g. poblano) on the other side. Their branches intertwine and the pollen gets on each other resulting in cross pollination. One jalapeno may look normal but it'll pack 10x or 15x the scofield heat units of a normal one, and meanwhile the other peppers picked that day are a normal jalapeno heat level.

I used to grow my peppers by order of mature height rather than order of heat. I learned my lesson and quit doing that because I even had a few sneaky hot bell peppers. Getting afterburn from a bell pepper isn't something I cared to repeat.

From my experience growing them,

A jalapeno with a curved stem will be hotter than one with a straight stem
If they develop tan\brown stripes they will be hotter than ones with the uniform green color
Left to redden, they will be hotter yet.

We grow only jalapenos, no other hot peppers.

I don't consider jalapenos to be that hot, but the ones that we've grown that have all three features above are actually pretty hot.

Try a carnicería if one is nearby. They tend to keep pretty good produce around here and their pepper selection is very good.

I grow jalapenos and habanero peppers most years. The latter is usually too hot for me but I love their flavor and use them in chili and other dished where I can dilute their heat.

I like to do the parmesan, cream cheese, breakfast sausage stuffed Jalapenos.
The hottest ones I've ever had were from a farm nearby and they were starting to show a little red blush on them.
I figured it was the variety of jalapeno but the growing to maturity makes sense.

I think it has to do with the extra cost of ripening them. That's why red bell peppers are more expensive than green bell peppers; they have to wait for the green bell peppers to ripen. And I suppose that since the red ones are ripe, that means a shorter shelf life for them to sell.