Jalapeños in Farmstead World — crop in the game, and what it is on a real farm.
The jalapeño is a small, thick-fleshed chili pepper, usually picked green and often sold fresh, pickled or smoked and dried as the chipotle.
It has a clear bite without being punishing, which is why it is the everyday hot pepper in so many kitchens.
Heat: 2,500–8,000 Scoville heat units (SHU), mild to medium.
A short history
The jalapeño is a Capsicum annuum named for Xalapa, in Veracruz, Mexico, and it has been a staple of Mexican cooking for centuries. Modern breeders have produced milder and hotter strains, but it remains the best-known medium-heat chili in North America.
How it is grown
Jalapeños grow on compact plants in warm weather and are picked green, usually by hand, though fruit left on the plant ripens to red. They are nightshades, so growers rotate them away from tomatoes, potatoes and other peppers to protect the soil and avoid shared diseases.
How spicy is it?
Heat: 2,500–8,000 Scoville heat units (SHU), mild to medium. Heat varies by plant and growing conditions, and a hot, dry season usually produces a hotter pepper.
Processing and uses
Jalapeños are sold fresh, pickled in jars and sliced for nachos. A ripe red jalapeño that is smoked and dried is called a chipotle.
Potato flowers give way to small green berries that can hold 50 to 500 tiny seeds each — yet new potato crops almost always start from planted tubers. (sti-portal.fao.org)
Light turns potato skins green and raises their solanine, a natural toxin — so growers hill soil up around the plants to keep the tubers covered. (extension.sdstate.edu)
The Lenape potato, released by USDA and Pennsylvania in 1967 for potato chips, was withdrawn in 1970 after testing found about twice the usual level of glycoalkaloid toxins. (potatopro.com)
Many Europeans distrusted the potato because it grew underground and belonged to the poisonous nightshade family; in places it was called the 'devil's apple'. (newenglandhistoricalsociety.com)
Early Europeans grew tomatoes as decoration and feared eating them because of their poisonous nightshade cousins - John Gerard's influential 1597 Herbal called them poisonous. (en.wikipedia.org)