Quote:
Originally Posted by ContainerTed
The store bought Peppadews are pickled in a sugary brine. The raw peppers are not sweet at any point in their growth and ripening. If you leave the seeds in, they are about as hot as a serrano pepper - perhaps a bit more. The skins are fairly thin. I've tried them roasted, fried, steamed, baked, and barbecued, and the bottom line is that they are not that special. The sweet pickling brine they are sold in makes the taste you are thinking about.
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Ted, I hate to disagree but they are special to me because when they are cooked down in vinegar and ground up and made into hot sauce it is spectacular. I have tried lots of peppers and none of the others even come close. Of course my hot sauce has a bit of sugar and molasses which may really bring out the flavor. It will make a mildly hot sauce that can be used heavily which is another plus. My brother in law absolutely loves the flavor of the raw ripe Pappadew peppers. Every time he is over in the fall he will be walking around munching on a couple of Pappadews. I'm not a big fan of the raw peppers myself and was amazed at how the flavor developed when making them into hot sauce. I didn't have enough Cayenne once when making sauce, so I just threw in a gallon of Pappadews and the resulting sauce was much better. After that I tried half and half which was even better, so naturally I went on to try pure Pappadew hot sauce. If I want it hotter I can always throw in some Malaguetas or some other really hot pepper.
The biggest problem with Pappadews is how long it takes them to finally make good ripe peppers. They don't even have any decent peppers on them til September or later. For some reason they will not ripen well in the heat of August and early September down here even though the peppers start turning color. They get this leathery soft feel to them during the really hot times so I just pull them and toss em til the weather cools off some. If you can get the plant large enough by mid fall down here then it will start pumping out beautiful firm red peppers til a very hard freeze kills it.