Jalapeño
The jalapeno [ xalapeɲo ] or Jalapena , German jalapeno , is a small to medium sized, sharp peppers places after the Mexican city of Xalapa (Jalapa earlier) is named. It is a cultivated form of the Spanish pepper ( Capsicum annuum ) from the genus Capsicum .
description
plant
Plants of the Jalapeño variety are typical representatives of the Capsicum annuum species . They reach a height of about 1.50 meters, mostly have white flowers, but there are also varieties with partially or completely purple flowers. A plant can bear around 30 fruits per year, in commercial cultivation under good conditions harvest results of over 120 fruits per plant can be achieved. The time between pollination of the flower and the ripening of the fruit is around 70 to 80 days.
fruit
The fruit of the jalapeños is usually 7 to 8 cm long, up to 2 cm thick and is usually easy to distinguish from other varieties due to the clearly rounded tip. The unripe fruits are mostly green, but there are also cultivated forms that produce dark purple to black or white fruits. When ripe, however, all jalapeños turn a strong red. The fruits are very thick and divided into three chambers by the seed septum, in which a large number of seeds can be found, so that there are hardly any cavities within the fruit. Often you can see elongated corkings on the fruits , which usually appear shortly before ripening and the color change to red. These cork spots, which look like brownish cracks, do not affect the quality of the fruit. In Mexico in particular, these are even used as a quality feature, while in the USA fruits without corking are preferred.
Sharpness
The piquant spiciness of the jalapeños is due to the capsaicin contained in the fruit . On the Scoville scale , which is commonly used for determining the heat , the fruits are between 2,500 and 8,000 units. Although the jalapeño is usually already perceived as very spicy, it still lags far behind the capsaicine content of a habanero pod , which brings it to 100,000 to 500,000 units.
cultivation
Cultivation
As one of the most important chillies in the USA and Mexico , the main growing areas are also in these countries. In Mexico, about 160 square kilometers are used for cultivation, which are divided between the valley of the Río Papaloapan in the states of Veracruz and Oaxaca , northern Veracruz, and the area around Delicias , Chihuahua . To a lesser extent, cultivation areas can also be found in Jalisco , Nayarit , Sonora , Sinaloa and Chiapas . Jalapeños are no longer grown commercially in the region around the eponymous city of Xalapa . Of the jalapeños grown in Mexico, 60 percent are further processed and preserved, 20 percent are sold fresh and 20 percent are made into chipotles.
The USA gets a large part of the preserved jalapeños from Mexico, but also grows jalapeños on around 22 square kilometers. The largest growing areas are in Texas , followed by New Mexico .
Fresh jalapeños are also rarely found in German supermarkets. Most of these come from Dutch greenhouses; some imports from Israel are also sold.
Variations
Due to its high popularity, seed manufacturers and breeders offer a wide variety of Jalapeño breeds and selections with different characteristics:
- TAM Jalapeño and False Alarm Jalapeño are mild, NuMex Primavera a cultivation without any sharpness. However, all of them offer the typical aroma of jalapeños.
- Jalapeño Jumbo , Giant , Conchos and El Jefe are characterized by their particularly large fruits.
- Planting Early Jalapeño bear fruit very quickly.
- Jalapeño Purple (violet), NuMex Pinata (yellow / orange) and Jaloro (yellow / orange) are characterized by the color of the unripe fruits . When ripe, however, these jalapeños are also red.
- Another specialty is the "Farmer's Market Jalapeño" variety - the very large fruits of the hairy plant sometimes cork green to such an extent that you can hardly see anything red on the pods when ripe. Because the chillies look similar to potatoes, the variety is also called "Jalapeño Farmers Market Potato".
use
Jalapeños are particularly popular in food in Texas and Mexico , where they can be found in almost every supermarket. In Germany they are mostly only available in pickled and chopped up form. They are often sold in theaters with nacho chips. Depending on how the fruit is processed, one can distinguish between three different types of use.
Fresh jalapeños
Fresh jalapeños are almost exclusively harvested and sold green, i.e. immature. In Mexican cuisine, they are mainly used for salsas , where they are used both as a vegetable and as a condiment because of their spiciness.
Especially in the southern cooking the United States are jalapeno poppers - stuffed with cheese and fried chillies - very popular.
Fresh, unripe jalapeños are also popular for garnishing because of their piquant, spicy taste and crunchy consistency.
Smoked Jalapeños - Chipotles
Because of the relatively thick flesh, jalapeños are poorly suited for air drying. In Mexico, the ripe fruits are therefore preserved by smoking . The wood of the mesquite tree used for this gives the dried fruits a typical smoky taste. Jalapeños smoked in this way are called chipotles . They are available either as whole fruits, as a powder or paste or in adobo sauce .
In Mexico there are different types of chipotles. In addition to the normal “chile ahumado” or “chipotle típico” made from ripe jalapeños, there are other names such as “morita” for shorter smoked and thus slightly softer and redder chipotles, “jalapeño chico” for green smoked jalapeños - mostly from open Markets for unsold and not completely fresh fruits - and “capones” for chipotles made from seedless jalapeños; these are the most expensive chipotles.
Chipotles are mainly used as a spicy ingredient in stews and sauces . The aroma of whole pods only develops after prolonged cooking. On the other hand, chipotle pastes, which are made from chipotles fried in oil and then pureed, can also be added later as a seasoning.
The name Chipotle is derived from the Nahuatl chipoctli or pochili , composed of chil and poctli (smoked). The Aztecs developed this type of preparation to preserve the chili peppers.
Pickled jalapeños
In Europe, jalapeños are mainly available in pickled form, but the fruits are also preserved this way in Mexico and the USA. Usually the fruits are cut into rings; however, there are also canned foods with whole jalapeño fruits.
Trivia
- A "Jalapeño Festival" has been held in Laredo (Texas) every year since 1978. In addition to a cooking competition, a “Miss Jalapeño” election and a mariachi competition, a jalapeño eating contest is an important part of the program.
- James Johnson from North Carolina , USA, received an entry in the Guinness Book of Records . From 20,150 self- grown and dried jalapeño fruits he built the longest ristra (a chain of chillies) with a length of 316.69 meters.
- "Pique", the mascot of the 1986 FIFA World Cup in Mexico, is a jalapeno with a mustache and a Mariachi - Sombrero .
- Paul Bosland from the Chile Pepper Institute of New Mexico State University received the satirical Ig Nobel Prize in Biology in 1999 for breeding the Primavera jalapeño variety , which has no heat whatsoever.
Web links
- Pepper profiles of Jalapeño and Chipotles in Dave's Pepper Pages
- The chilli variety Jalapeño (German)
- Jalapeño profile at www.hot-pain.de (German)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Capsicum Annuum: Farmers' Jalapeno. Retrieved February 17, 2019 .
- ^ Winners of the Ig® Nobel Prize / 1999. In: improbable.com. Retrieved February 17, 2019 .
