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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Short answer – they’re good at cooking.
If it’s a dish with peppers added while it’s cooked they’ll taste as they add and only put in the amount they need to get the food to the spice level they want.
If it’s something like stuffed peppers it’s usually a less spicy pepper – like a jalapeno – so the top end of spicyness isn’t too high to eat. I’ve had stuffed peppers that had very little spice.
They don’t lol, me and my wife love peppers and we notice differences all the time at restaurants.
The restaurants by me are just inconsistent with hotness. The key is making your wife try it first and then determining if it’s safe to eat based on her reaction. That’s my strategy anyway.
IIRC, chilis’ heat is dependent (first of course) on genetics, but then growing conditions. The mix of nutrients, water (roughly speaking, dryer grow conditions = hotter), sun/light exposure, etc. If you can keep grow conditions largely consistent, so will your end result. But yea, there is just natural variation from fruit to fruit.
If you go to Chipotle and order the red sauce, you’ll notice that the hotness does vary greatly. I get it every time and sometimes it is too hot for me and I have high tolerance. As others have pointed out, other restaurants use processed food and if you are buying hot sauce in a bottle at the grocery store, it is certainly processed
This is new to me. My dad grew habaneros and scotch bonnets for homemade hot sauce and cooking and and I can’t ever remember any of them not being insanely hot
So the capsaicin is spread out amongst a large batch. Thus creating the consistency that is found in the meal you are intending to ingest. I love hot peppers I love them passionately.
Short answer: you don’t. Lol you just trust that the suppliers did their job well enough. Also you definitely do taste test the finished batch just to make sure. Green chile is pretty reliable though, it’s down to a pretty good science where I live.
Source: helped run my mom’s New Mexican restaurant for five years
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