Chile peppers have long been mistaken as nothing but spicy, but they actually exhibit considerable diversity.
When it comes to the various cuisines that rely on chile peppers for spicy dishes, the diversity becomes even greater: It blooms into the complex heat that is only slowly becoming recognized.
Let’s break down where the diversity of flavors, aromas, and pungencies – the complex heat of chile peppers, hot sauces, and spicy dishes – comes from.
The origins of the complex heat of chile peppers lie with their
- botany,
- growing conditions,
- processing, and
- combinations.
Botany
Botanically, most chile peppers belong to the species Capsicum annuum L. (L. as in “Linnei,” because Carolus Linnaeus, the inventor of botanical nomenclature, named them… wrongly, as they are not actually annual plants. But, I digress.)
Species of Capsicum
Given the wide range of chile peppers, from the minuscule (and usually very spicy) chiltepin to the large and completely mild bell peppers, it does not mean much that most of them are Capsicum annuum.
There is a large diversity of varieties within the species, and that does contribute to the different flavors, pungencies, and other characteristics.
There are four other species of Capsicums that are commonly cultivated, if less widely – and their characteristics differ enough to make a larger difference:
Capsicum frutescens L. are the bird peppers such as the tabasco chile pepper, which typically show high pungency of a rather clear kind (and are not very diverse).
Capsicum baccatum L. var. baccatum are most of the ají (which actually simply means chile pepper) of South America.
Most types of C. baccatum have middle to high pungency and very interesting, rather fruity, berry-like flavors.
Capsicum pubescens Ruiz & Pav. are the rocoto of South America and manzano of Central America.
They are often somewhat apple-like in looks (hence, “manzano“), with a thick flesh and a strongly biting, clean pungency.
Within all those species, especially C. annuum, is a range of varieties, types, etc. of different peppers.
Growing Conditions: Terroir
It’s not just the genetics, such as the different species, that make for a plant’s characteristics, however. “Terroir,” as known from wine, also plays a great role.
In many instances, chile peppers (or products made from them) are different because they are distinct varieties being grown in distinct locales:
New Mexican peppers, for example, are not just certain varieties bred there, for the conditions in the locale, and for the characteristics expected of them, but they should also come from New Mexico – even if, in this case, attempts at even establishing official designations of origin never came to fruition.
Europe has some chile peppers/products with a D.O.C., a controlled designation of origin
Piment d’Espelette, for example, has to be of this Basque variety of chile pepper and grown in the Espelette area. Otherwise, it cannot be sold with that label.
Of course, if you take a Calabrian peperoncino and grow it in your garden far away from Calabria (in the south of Italy), it may not be noticeably different. It may also end up different, however.
And of course, it makes a difference whether you take a chile pepper that has a connection, through genetics and terroir, with its long history – or not.
We don’t just pick and eat peppers straight off the plants that grew them, most of the time, we also process them further.
Processing
Many different techniques and practices constitute the processing of a food. Processed foods have a bad reputation, but anything that isn’t just eaten raw is, actually processed
The processing that happens with chile peppers is among the great examples of traditional kinds of processing that are actually helpful and oftentimes healthful…
Drying
Even if it’s only hanging chile peppers up to dry, it is processing, and this further treatment not only extends how long the chile peppers will keep, it also changes their characteristics.
Drying gets rid of water content, obviously. In the process, it reduces volume, changes and concentrates flavors and pungency.
Sometimes, drying and crushing peppers includes a step in which the placenta, the parts on which the seeds grow, is removed.
Having fewer seeds makes for a deeper red powder, and since most peppers produce the capsaicinoids that make them spicy in the placenta, this processing step also reduces the pungency.
This is most obvious (as so often, at least once you know it) in the different qualities of Hungarian paprika powder.
Smoking
Other peppers are also made into a dry powder, but dried by smoking.
Smoking, especially if done over woods, of course gives different aromas – and thus, a dried jalapeño is still a jalapeño, but a smoked dried jalapeño turns into a chipotle.
(And jalapeño chiles would dry badly, thick-fleshed as they are, so it only makes sense that they are smoked if the aim is to keep them in a dried state.)
Fermentation
We don’t only use chile peppers either fresh or dried. A major technique for processing foods is fermentation, and this is a major source of the various hot sauces.
Fermentation, through the diverse microorganisms employed in it (which are intimately related to the place, terroir-like) makes for a great variety of flavors, yet again – and that is before even starting to consider all the aromatics that will usually be added.
Adding Aromatics
Chile peppers and garlic, for example, are foundational for the duo lajiao (chopped, preserved chilli) of China’s Hunan province – and also of sriracha.
The different peppers and different fermentation make the two very different. (And duo lajiao gets used in cooking, as a foundational ingredient, not as a sauce to add in the end, like sriracha sauce.)
Cooking
Ultimately, then, we get to the combination of ingredients, in fermentation (or other processing) or in the processing which we simply call cooking.
The right kinds of peppers with the right characteristics, combined with the right aromatics, make the right – and complex – heat and flavors of the diverse hot sauces and spicy dishes around the world.
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