Peppadew

[austinnhanasmom]

So about a week ago, I dug up two Peppadew plants to bring in for the winter. While I was digging, I found a third - WOO HOO!

Of course the smallest of the three is the most happy after being rudely removed from the ground.

However, I think they shall all survive!

I have saved seeds from the largest fruits and WOW what an aroma! The fumes make me cough. You KNOW that's a great pepper!

[TZ-OH6]

About a week ago I cracked the seal on the first of my 3 pints of pickled Peppadew from the recipe on the first page. They are pretty good even though the fruit didn't have much flavor fresh, due to late ripening. I also used the recipe on some other sweet-hot peppers (red and green). I was concerned that the high sugar-syrup content of the liquid would override the flavor of the peppers, but I could tell a difference.


This was my first try at canning, and the Peppadews did some odd things. The flesh is soft and the skin slips off in your mouth, and there are some hard "crystals" somewhat like pear stone cells in the preserved Peppadews. Anyone know about this?

I think the recipe will be good for pickling Brazilian Starfish peppers too.

I am wintering over two plants (pruned back) in hopes of getting an earlier ripening next year. Three pints of ripe fruit out of five big plants is not very good.

[huntsman]

They actually don't have a great flavour when fresh even when they are ripened on time.

Best thing to do with them is a stern pickling, imho...!

[b54red]

I did not pickle mine but made a hot sauce from the ripe red peppers and it was absolutely wonderful. If like me you are unable to do the pickling thing then I recommend making a good hot sauce with them.
We had a very long fall here and the peppers ripened beautifully in the slightly cooler weather. I had no luck getting them to ripen in the high heat of late summer but wow they looked totally different as soon as it cooled down a little bit.
I recommend starting the seed as early as possible if you live further north than zone 8. I will probably start mine in late December this year or at least by early January.

[huntsman]

Good advice, Bill -

Care to share that sauce recipe...?

[b54red]

Originally Posted by huntsman

They actually don't have a great flavour when fresh even when they are ripened on time.

Best thing to do with them is a stern pickling, imho...!

They make a fantastic hot sauce. One of the best I have ever tasted if not the best.

My peppers didn't taste very good or ripen good until the cooler weather got here and then they were very good fresh eating peppers. Since I don't pickle I thought I'd try making a hot sauce with the bucket of nice red ones I picked in November.

Thanks for the seed you sent me they are now my three favorite hot peppers. All of the plants got really big here and produced like crazy. I guess they like our climate in south Alabama, which is not always friendly to humans, but for hot peppers it is ideal.

[huntsman]

Originally Posted by b54red

They make a fantastic hot sauce. One of the best I have ever tasted if not the best.

Ahem....!

Care to share?

[b54red]

Huntsman, this is my method of making hot sauce. The straining can be a pain but it removes most of the seed which don't grind up too well and it makes the sauce smoother.

I make a variety of hot sauces. This year I made a Cayenne, Uyababa, Malagueta, and Pappadew hot sauces.
I put on rubber surgical gloves first.

1. Rinse the peppers and clip off the stem ends and place in stainless steel pot.

2. Add a few fresh garlic cloves and cover with white vinegar.

3. Bring to a boil then turn down the heat and simmer for several hours stirring occasionally. You can stop at this point and keep it like this for weeks until you get enough peppers. Just make sure to bring it to a boil each time you add more peppers and vinegar.

4. Blend peppers and garlic in blender and strain through a stainless steel regular mesh kitchen strainer. Take the pulp which didn't go through the strainer and put it back in the blender with more vinegar and repeat the process. Push the blended pulp through the strainer again with a large spoon and rap the strainer to get the maximum sauce through. Most of what is left in the strainer is just seeds which you don't want so throw it away.

5. Put strained peppers back in boiler on low heat and add sugar and salt to taste. If it is too hot add more vinegar and sugar.

6. I then add some brown sugar, molasses and Worcestershire sauce to taste. The molasses and Worcestershire sauce mellow and help meld the flavors. The sugar cuts the heat and smooths out the vinegary taste.

7. Pour into clean bottles and cap or cork. No need to water bath. Too much vinegar and heat for anything to live in it.

My biggest problem was coming up with enough bottles for the sauce. This year I had to resort to old wine bottles and still ran out so I put the extra in plain jars.

I've been making my own for years and it takes a little practice. The first time is the hardest because you don't have a sense yet of how much of each of the ingredients to use. I'm sorry I have no measurements to help you but I am working with a different amount of peppers with varying degrees of hotness each time and just have to wing it. If you get it way too thin you can blend a little cornstarch into water and add to the heating sauce until you get the desired consistency but be careful because it will get thicker as it cools.

[huntsman]

Sounds like great fun - thanks B!

[darwinslair]

From 12 seeds I had 3 very vigorous plants which I put into 10 gallon pots. We had a long hot wet summer, and all produced fruit which was spicy-sweet, but not hot. The tallest of them was about 4' tall by the end of the summer and I brought it inside. It has not flowered but it did ripen the peppers which were green when I brought it in and the plant has continued to grow at a north-facing window, now standing about 6' tall. I am curious to see how many peppers it sets in a second year outside. Seeds from Roeper

Tom

[austinnhanasmom]

I opened a few jars of pickled peppadews and received rave reviews from all that tasted!

Some were quite spicy and some were perfect. Great flavor.

[Boutique Tomatoes]

Can anyone spare a few peppadew seeds for 2011? I've been watching my chinense peppers pop for a few days now and after reading through this thread I figure if I was going to try peppadews this year I should get them started now...

[remy]

Hi,
I have them. I'll send you a PM.
Remy

[ContainerTed]

At the end of the growing season last year, I harvested the remaining peppers from my 4 peppadew plants and simply set the container into the garage (about 5 gallons of fruit - hundreds of peppers red and green). Since we don't eat a lot of hot peppers here, I forgot about them until about a month ago when I was cleaning up the garage and getting things ready for planting time.

The peppers had mostly ripened out and dried quiet a bit. The two containers (One for ripe fruit at harvest time and one for the rest) had spent the winter and some VERY low temps out there. However, even though the day was cold (mid 20's), the peppers were not frozen. I broke a couple open and saw the usual seeds. The drying skins of the fruit were somewhat leathery.

So, on Feb 02, I couldn't resist and planted a six pack containing about a dozen seeds. I took it inside and set in on the top of a tall piece of furniture in the bedroom in hopes of something germinating.

After about 10 days, impatient me added a heating pad (set to LOW). Voila!! Two little seedlings popped up 3 days later. Moved everything to the fireplace hearth and added a florescent light. Voila! Two more seedlings about 3 days after that.

Now, here's the "rest of the story". I had actually loaded up two six-packs, and my purpose was really to do a test. The second one got no special heat other than the ambient temperature of the house (about 68-72F). Neither got light until germination was evident. The second six-pack still has not shown any sign of germination while the first one now has 6 plants.

Kind of shows how important temperature is when dealing with this "long season", high ambient temperature, piquant pepper.

And these will go to the garden early this year to see if we can figure out the best way to start them in Zone 6a.

Finally, I had also harvested some seeds last September. So, confident that I had plenty to plant this year, I threw the rest of those peppers out on a south-facing bank down by the fence. The birds haven't touched them and I've watched the field mice give them wide berth. I wonder how many "volunteers" I'll see this year??

Ted

[FILMNET]

I have bad seeds, some started in dirt 5 weeks , and papers 7 days , none will open up.