Jalapeno pepper plants

The pepper everyone has eaten, and the one most people have never grown well.

By Debra Austin

What counts as a jalapeno

A jalapeno is a Capsicum annuum with a thick-walled, blunt-tipped pod about two to three inches long, bred in Mexico and named for Xalapa in Veracruz. The wall thickness is the whole point: it is what lets the pod take a stuffing, a grill or a smoker without collapsing.

Most jalapenos sold as plants are one of a handful of commercial lines selected for size and disease resistance. The interesting ones are the strays: the selections that go purple before they ripen red, the heatless mutants, the crosses that keep the shape and lose the burn.

Corking is a feature

Those white stretch marks running up a jalapeno are corking, and they are not damage. The pod grows faster than its skin, the skin splits, and the plant heals it over. In Mexico a corked pod is the one you buy, because corking tracks with a pod that has sat on the plant long enough to mean something.

Commercial US buyers spent decades treating corking as a defect, which is how the supermarket jalapeno got smooth, thick and dull.

Heat, and the heatless ones

A jalapeno sits in the low medium band, around 2,500 to 8,000 SHU, which makes it the reference pepper people measure others against. Fooled You is the interesting exception: a true jalapeno shape and flavour with the capsaicin bred out, which is a stranger achievement than any superhot.

Smoke a ripe red jalapeno and it becomes a chipotle. That is not a different variety, it is the same pod with the water taken out over wood.

What you cook with a jalapeno

Stuff them, smoke the ripe red ones into chipotles, or slice them into a salsa. The thick wall is why this pepper exists. A serrano is a poor swap when the recipe needs a cavity. A Fresno is closer, and we do not grow one.

Growing them

Jalapenos are the easy end of the genus. They set fruit fast, they crop heavily, they tolerate ordinary soil, and they ripen in the middle of the season rather than making you wait until frost. Three to five gallons is plenty of pot.

Pick green for the classic flavour, leave them to red for sweetness and more heat. A plant will keep producing either way as long as you keep picking.

The Jalapenos we grow

Questions people ask

How hot is a jalapeno?

Roughly 2,500 to 8,000 SHU, the low end of the medium band. It is the pepper most heat comparisons are measured against.

What are the white lines on my jalapeno?

Corking. The pod grew faster than its skin and healed the splits. It is a sign of maturity, not damage, and in Mexico it is what buyers look for.

What is a chipotle?

A ripe red jalapeno, smoked and dried. Same pepper, different treatment.

Is there a jalapeno with no heat?

Yes. Fooled You is a hybrid with the jalapeno shape and flavour and effectively no capsaicin, measured at 0 to 100 SHU.