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?
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I work at a small enough place I think I can give you a better answer than the peppers averaging out in a batch. If you want to know before use cut off the tip and taste it. I save hot ones to be minced for soup and more balanced jalapenos end up on sandwiches. When using a flattop grill to heat pepper rings you can smell/feel how hot they are. I adjust how much I use per order based on that sensation.
I’m here to tell you, no two Jalapeños are the same. They are simultaneously the mildest and hottest pepper in existence
Cultivars make sure their products meet the quality expected. The heat developed by peppers is can be controlled by growers. Restaurants and food preparers use the peppers they know will give them the consistent quality they are looking for.
It’s no different than wine, tea, and other products were consistency is expected from growers.
I dunno what they do in the west, but here in SE asia the chilli peppers are just luck of the draw
Vlasic jalapeño slices are so damn good, I can’t find any that are the same spiciness with the same crunch they have, but every jar is the same.
I think if you grow in a large field, where pollination is coming from the same set of plants, you get consistent plants
At home, different flowers get pollinated from different plants and come out inconsistent.
I have found that at home, if you grow different varieties together, after a few years, they eventually all turn into the same hotness.
They can’t always. I’ve gotten jalapeños on a restaurant burger that tasted like green bell peppers with no heat whatsoever.
You can measure Scovilles in a lab these days.
interestingly the Scoville test as was originally created was actually extremely close in calculation when they found the technology to measure it in a lab. The original test was to dilute it in a measured volume until there was no heat. For example Scoville of a million means that 1 part pepper to 1 million parts water is where it is no longer tasted.
So cook a big batch of the chiles of your choice, test it, then add it to your process, whether that is fermenting or whatever. Edit: I would imagine for fermenting it might be done first and then all mixed together and then measured?
Edit I see in another comment you are talking about individual fresh chiles. I imagine they QA for each batch.
Also sometimes they don’t! There is a salsa at Trader Joe’s that will vary wildly in spice level.
Food manufacturers use zero heat jalapeños and add the capsaicin back in to always get a consistent heat level.
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