Is there a legitimate use for habeneros or are they just obnoxiously hot?
About The Author

BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
Sometimes jalapenos just don’t have enough kick when you are making salsa.
Right now I’d love to stick a few habaneros into Joe Lieberman’s lunch at the Senate cafeteria.
well, put it this way: we grew a batch last year, and froze them.
when i make salsa, and i make huge batches because christina is big on canning, i can’t even use ONE of the things. Not even one.
they are brutal. great for playing pranks though. rub your fingers all over one, and then shake hands with a conservative, preferably before he goes to the bathroom.
Doesn’t that violate the Geneva Convention?
“Violate the Geneva conventions?”
why should that bother me, when it doesn’t bother them?
I once ruined a giant pot of chili with just one habenero. I was way too spicy to eat, and acidic, too. And I like my food extra spicy.
Did you take out the seeds and the membranes? That is where most of the ungodly heat is. I can’t imagine one habanero ruining a “giant pot” of chili. Unless the habanero is just what pushed it over the edge because you had already pushed the limit on the heat.
I have grown habaneros for years and used them for a long time in a ton of different stuff. I have a gallon zip lock bag of some of this years dried and in the pantry right now. And what I’ve found is that not all habaneros, or hot peppers in general, are created equal. That is what them so difficult to work with. Using hot peppers, particularly ones as volatile as the diminutive habanero, is done at your own risk.
As a self professed kitchen geek, I can tell you one thing. Using hot peppers in your kitchen adventures is not for cook who is timid or faint of heart. It’s the kitchen equivalent of nitroglycerin.
I don’t remember what I did with the seeds and membranes because this was like 10 years ago now. But ever since I’ve been wary of using them even in salsa, as it is easy to ruin something but hard to get it just right. I prefer using Kung Pao, Red Thai, Serrano and peppers in that vein.
Create your own natural chocolate and then put it in.
Yum!
That was the drink, I believe, the Incas and the Aztecs enjoyed before the Conquest.
exactly.
Provides a nice kick, but makes my eyes water while cooking.
I can’t think of a single one, nope. 🙂
(but then, I won’t even eat jalapenos, so I’m probably not a good one to ask!)
You can make a habanero-lime juice salsa and store it in a jar in a fridge (one habanero, some diced tomatoes, and lime juice).
And you can use is on a variety of things. One very good use of it is in black bean soup.
They are obnoxiously hot, but they have a different flavor from, say jalapenos. As they say, a little dab will do you.
We use habaneros when making pineapple salsa. The pineapple provides a nice cool sweetness and then the peppers knock you on your ass. Wonderful on grilled pork tenderloin or chicken.
“they have a different flavor from, say jalapenos“
How the hell can you tell one flavour from another when your entire upper body is in flames?
If your whole upper body is in flames, you didn’t use a little dab.
Consider that a half cup of this salsa is about 15 uses. So what you are putting into a serving of black bean soup is about a thirtieth of a habanero.
I make nachos with them, and caribbean reds, which are worse.
The trick is to use smaller pieces. You build up a tolerance for them over time, so eventually you can be like this guy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaEjcY30wgY
I see no use for any ingredient if there is a warning in the recipe not to touch it with bare hands.
I also do not understand pain as part of a pleasurable dining experience.
I grow them and use them in everything from salsa to adjusting the heat in red and green chile sauces
make a salsa of carrots, garlic, onions, lots of lime juice, lots of salt, plus a small amount of habanero – it has a very distinct flavor even if you use so little that the heat is no greater than jalapeños
Marie Sharpe has a sauce like this that’s great. The green is milder, but both are great.
http://www.mariesharps-bz.com/
Well, my wife bought one, and left it sitting on the kitchen counter. One morning we were sitting and eating breakfast, and we noticed the cat playing with something, but we couldn’t figure out what it was. You got it – she had the habanero. And about at that instant, she grabbed the thing by the stem and went running upstairs with it. I ran after her to find that she had abandoned the thing on the floor in the middle of the bedroom.
She never tried to bite into the thing – she would have let out a howl had that been the case. Later as I was shaving to get ready for work, she was calmly sitting on the floor watching me.
They can’t be eaten straight up like jalapenos, but they are wonderful in salsa. El Yucateco brand hot sauce is made with habaneros and is exceptional on rice and beans. Of course, no one in my family but me eats it.
Mmmmmmmm.
Great shot! Anyone who uses this has my utmost respect. If it wasn’t so late I’d go searching for a bottle for myself right now.
Living in Tasmania, my only source of Latin American food is the Asian market in Moonah – go figure.
I’m quite attached to habenero stuffed olives. You can just have one or two and they give a great spicy/salty kick.
Habanero Aioli is da bomb. It goes on anything and everything. Particularly good on Toast with avocado.
You can whiz them up in a blender with some water and use it to kill ants. Seriously! It’s an organic pesticide. Just pour this concoction on an ant hill and watch them roll over on their backs and kick their little legs for a while. Remember that ants breathe through little holes in their skin.
I suppose this constitutes cruelty to insects, but it definitely works and the capsaicin biodegrades.
OOh, I wonder if that would work for ginormous southern cockroaches. I mean palmetto bugs.
Palmetto bugs? Uh, like Joe Wilson, Jim DeMint, Lindsay Graham, and Mark Sanford?
Those palmetto bugs?
Similarly, they work well for training dogs not to chew on certain items. Grind them up into a paste, add a little water and paint it on whatever you want the dogs to leave alone. I used it on the foam insulation on the air conditioner compressor “cold” copper pipes that the dogs were having so much fun with, after replacing the stuff a couple of times.
They never touched it again.
That’s a thought! Might even work on Labrador Retrievers who are world-class chewers. Great dogs, loyal,obedient,gentle, but they chew everything and eat a lot.
“Is there a legitimate use for habeneros or are they just obnoxiously hot?”
There is no legitimate use for ANY ‘hot’ chili pepper in cooking, if you assume all ingredients are intended to advance flavor.
Hot is not flavor.
nalbar
Thank you!!!!!
No self respecting cook would contend that heat equals flavor. Heat is an accent. It can be used in a variety of ways to achieve balance, particularly in combination with sweet ingredients to provide interesting flavor contrasts. The ability to achieve that is what separates the men from the boys in the kitchen.
Any ingredient in excess will kill a dish. Even an ingredient as glorious as bacon or good cheese can be overdone. Fear of the chili pepper will only lead to an unfulfilled and boring culinary existence. How sad is that?
Bravo!
Sitting at my desk passionately defending hot peppers at this hour of the night! I’ve got to get a life!!
Agreed.
Get away from the desk and start defending habañeros full time. Now, that’s a life!
Taste is actually a combination of senses. Our tongues have a very limited range of sensation, namely: sweet, sour, salty and bitter. Almost thing else comes from our noses, which includes those fumes that make it up to our sinuses or down the back of our throat. Even vision and texture play into our sense of how things taste. I love wasabe and horseradish, and anything else that gives me that sense of heat traveling up to my sinuses and lifting the top of my skull about an inch off my brain.
Of course, once, in Mexico, I gave the inside of my mouth second-degree burns eating a whole lot of really good salsa. The whole inside of my mouth peeled like s bad sunburn. It was worth it.
When a person recognizes and focuses on the entire experience of the senses like you describe, that is when you truly can enjoy food. It is the gastronomical version of the “runner’s high”. I first recognized that when I was in France many years ago and found that even the smells emanating from the preparation of the meal were part and parcel of the whole eating experience. It just primed all your senses for what was to come. It’s all tied together, whether one realizes it or not.
I agree. I think we lost something when the kitchen was separated from the dining area. And also when we gave up raising our own food.
I like to eat a few things raw in the garden as a way of “extending” the whole experience of the meal. Of course, Hector, our house rabbit, gets miffed if I don’t bring him back a selection of garden greens as well. We’ve learned that Cavalo Nero (black kale), Sorrel, Spinach, and Corn Salad will grow all through the cold months here. We must be doing something right – no one has died of scurvy yet.
You’ll never make it in Indian cooking if you don’t see that ‘hot’ isn’t just one flavor, but a family of flavors.
We recently had a local Indian restaurant change hands. The son is a trained chef recently arrived from India. The rest of the family are the wait staff and kitchen help. They have consciously decided not to change the food to suit “white people’s” expectations. It’s amazingly good, and hot.
Now I want some palak paneer, aloo gobi, vegetables korma, and a garlic nan. Oh, and a mango lassi and some lime pickle. Damn you.
Not all Indian/Pakistani food is hot. Depends on the region.
Some also claim that they drink beer, wine, and whiskey for the taste.
HA!
They drink them to get a buzz.
And they eat peppers for the sensation. Hey, go ahead and enjoy the thrill. But nobody who is seeking flavor overuses items (spices) that were original used to hide the taste of rotten meat.
What fools we mortals be.
nalbar
For me hot peppers make it impossible to taste anything. All I can feel is the pain, so it destroys the flavour for me.
That is what happens to almost everyone. They are confusing sensation with taste.
nalbar
Over apply your own experiences much? 😉
There are things I find repulsive that most people like, such as coffee. I always wondered why, “if you have to acquire the taste” for coffee, anyone would bother.
Fact is, we don’t all perceive sensations the same way, and most of the world’s food traditions include some sort of chemical “heat”. Even pickling is considered “hot”.
“we don’t all perceive sensations the same way“
Quite right. For example, one of my colleagues thinks white peaches are the most fabulous-tasting fruit on earth, and I find them almost without flavour and not worth bothering with at all.
On the other hand, it is very much not a pretty sight watching my hot-food-loving friends downing pepper-laden Thai, Chinese, or Indian food. It is very, very difficult to imagine how they can possibly enjoy eating something that leaves them red-faced, sweating, and gasping for air. It seems rather masochistic.
Endorphine rush.
Doesn’t look even remotely pleasurable to me. Maybe they like it because it feels so good when it stops?
BooMan,
OK, now you’re asking an important question.
And the answer is most definitely yes. The most legitimate use of the habanero pepper that I know of is as the main ingredient in Vizcaya brand Orange Habanero Sauce, which is made in Belize but also available in the USA. Applied sparingly, I prefer it in most cases to Tabasco and similar red hot sauces, which tend to have a rather strong taste of vinegar along with the heat. Vizcaya does have some vinegar, but it’s cane vinegar, and along with the very slight orange pulp (which you hardly notice), onion, garlic and salt, makes a really nice sauce.
I stick to serranos. Good heat, good flavor. Don’t much care for the taste of habaneros.
Habañeros are best in combination with sweets, otherwise the heat overwhelms the flavor. But used judiciously as part of a sweet/hot combination, they can be amazing.
Interesting. They might be good dipped in chocolate. The cocoa butter might help neutralize the fiery habanero oil.
I love jalapenos. I can always find them fresh at the store and they can fire up just about anything. I remove the seeds and crap from the inside and dice them really really fine. Then wash my hands well with warm soapy water to get the oils off my skin before I go and touch my nose or eyes.
I love spicy stuff but habaneros are better suited for a cruel hazing prank (or training dogs as I mention above) than for eating.
Just came from a seminar! They are used to protect sea turtle eggs from raccoons and foxes, so they live to hatch.
Marie Sharps’ Hot Sauce – from Belize. They balance the heat (some seeds are even used!) with carrots and lime. Best hotsauce around, and it’s not one of those stupid ‘stocking stuffer’ sauces that are inedible. This shit is GOOOOOOOD.
outside of jerk chicken, pork or beef, no.
in my cube at work. Note the habanero sauce second from the left is nearly empty.
The Mrs. and I had lunch at our favorite Mexican joint and enjoyed their salsa spiced up with some habenero salsa. Most places serve very mild salsa so we add habenero to give it some zip. Generally we don’t eat it straight but mixed in, it is great.
Our son makes salsa with habeneros. It only takes one or two to spice up a batch.