I have seen the hotness of peppers vary *greatly* between the same species in the same garden, and even on the same plant. How do restaurants and other food preparers manage to get a product with consistent hotness?

Question

I have seen the hotness of peppers vary *greatly* between the same species in the same garden, and even on the same plant. How do restaurants and other food preparers manage to get a product with consistent hotness?

In: 1743

Answer 1

All peppers are the same species, actually, from your basic sweet bells to the hottest reapers and ghosts.

It’s all breeding. It’s like what we’ve done to dogs: they’re all the same species too, but their physical characteristics vary wildly based on selective breeding.

Some varieties do have wildly varying spiciness. Shishito peppers, for example, are mostly entirely mild except for about 10% of them that are much hotter. Never know what you’re gonna get. At a restaurant level, you just accept that some batches are going to be hotter than others. But, overall, growers can select and control what they grow well enough to make most of them mostly consistent most of the time.